


All Quiet on the Liminal Fringe

by mustinvestigate



Category: Neuromancer - William Gibson, Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Crossover, Cyberpunk, Cybersex, Dubcon Cuddling, F/M, First Time, M/M, Masturbation, OT3, Prostitution, Self-Indulgent, Watchmen Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-02-21 07:33:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 53,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2460095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustinvestigate/pseuds/mustinvestigate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dreiberg, Kovacs, and Laurie Isham are vigilante cowboys dedicated to making life difficult for the cybercriminals and megacorps that keep a stranglehold on a dystopian world’s 11 billion lives.</p>
<p>(See also: a silly joke that's gotten 150-plus pages out of hand.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Focus, Daniel,” his partner murmured, attention locked on the streams of data passing before his eyes. If he still had eyes, of which Dreiberg wasn’t entirely sure. “Your heart rate is spiking.”

Dreiberg tried to nod, but his attention was too absorbed in his projection to make his meat jump. “I’ve just dropped the virus package,” he assured Kovacs, the words sounding impossibly slow in his ears. “Now we wait – no, there it goes.”

The virus latched onto the corporation’s security program, which looked to Dreiberg like a gently revolving dodecahedron. Dreiberg’s virus – and he was proud of this one, whipped up overnight and utilising an unstable algorithm that should degrade as it dismantled security, leaving no trace behind – stripped facets from the shape, which struggled to envelope it. Shimmering “bricks” fell away from both and shattered in the nothingness of cyberspace.

Dreiberg mentally drummed his fingers and waited. He had a good five seconds before the two programs would immolate each other and he’d be able to jump into the vice ring’s data stream. It was time enough to work through a few more chapters of _Don Quixote_ , if paperbacks could exist in cyberspace.

Back in the real world, his partner hurmed and kept tabs on the meatbag Dreiberg had left behind. Kovacs could be doing this himself – should, Dreiberg was beginning to think, as his reaction times slipped by precious milliseconds – but he preferred to back Daniel up when a job required…delicacy.

Kovacs had undergone the most radical body modification – or mortification, Dreiberg thought – that he’d ever seen. He’d turned himself into little but walking hardware, wiring up his spine and sinking a multi-port jack through the base of his skull, filaments encasing his physical brain. It sucked power from his nervous system, necessitating massive endocrine supplements just to leave a little energy for unimportant things like respiration and blood flow. His body was a computer, and he upgraded it mercilessly.

Most of his skull had been replaced by titanium plates studded with data ports, and the top half of his face was covered by a curved, mirrored laminate. In a dark room, Dreiberg could watch the shift of data across the plate, dancing black and white formula sets.

He knew Kovacs had grown up in one of the Sprawl’s nastiest state-run orphanages. Dreiberg had accessed and memorised every scrap of data on his partner during their first job together – a pure revenge gig for Dreiberg, taking down the Yakuza-backed bank that had assassinated his father; for Kovacs, just another day in his mad Knight Templar existence, stabbing at the windmills of the world – and was sure Kovacs had done the same with him. The little man had come out of the Maximum Security Charlton Home with a mean streak and a burning need to save the innocent he no longer was, a combination Dreiberg sometimes envied and sometimes just had no damn patience for. 

He’d seen the medical records, could guess why Kovacs so enthusiastically attacked the fleshly prison than anchored him to the messy world of breathing and eating and excreting, but in all his searching, had never come across a single image of his partner. No school mug shot, no closed-circuit observation, not even a friend’s snapshot. Kovacs had eradicated his face from the world.

Dreiberg contemplated his partner’s face, or the chin, nose, and lips that were possibly all that was left of it, to kill the last two seconds. He’d practically numbered every pore when the two programs imploded together – back in the meat world, Dreiberg’s stomach heaved in rejection of the physically impossible configuration – and on the inside, Dreiberg grinned, and pounced.

* * *

Laurie Isham was waiting when he finished, slipping the virtual reality helmet from his head with fingers that felt thick as firehoses. She stubbed out her contraband cigarette half-smoked and helped him to his feet.

“You got em?” she asked, pointedly ignoring Kovacs as he bundled the equipment away into the hidden safe under the stairs.

“We got em,” Dreiberg replied, unable to keep the smug satisfaction out of his voice. He’d single-handedly destroyed a massive 64mb of child pornography before it hit the streets, shooting the police department enough data to compare the models to their missing-child registers and arrest the perpetuators. Should they be so inclined and able, within their complex web of bribes and favors owed. Dreiberg had been careful to bounce the data through three laundering hubs, just in case.

“Good.” Laurie had done most of the legwork on this job, infiltrating the legitimate front of the vice ring under the cover of her own persona – a has-been simstim star looking for new backers to re-launch her career. They’d politely herded her through their divisions (her recording every detail, including codes and schematics carelessly left flopped across an R&D workspace, with her china-blue Zeiss-Ikon eyes), rejected her proposal, and thought nothing more of her. She certainly hadn’t enjoyed the ego-beating, even if she never, ever wanted to go back to Jon and her mother and that pre-fab fantastic world, and had to take a lot of satisfaction in the company’s loss.

The world still called her Sally Isham’s kid, who'd almost followed in her famous mother’s footsteps. Sally was still out in California, living the luxurious lifestyle for the second-hand kicks of every hopeless dreamer in the Sprawl, and Jon was still spinning dreams into reality – only real enough for holos, as Laurie had confided he was a nerdy little labcoat guy underneath all the projected Adonis glamour. Laurie, smart kid, saved her money, bought her own Zeiss-Ikon eyes from the company that owned her, and split for the real world at the unheard-of age of 28.

She helped him up to the kitchen, Kovacs trailing silently behind. Dreiberg’s two partners didn’t get along, but he knew Kovacs respected her for rejecting her mother’s game to fight the good fight, and that kept them on barely civil terms.

“Look,” she said, holding one hand toward Kovacs. Razors slipped out from underneath her nails, one of them nicking his chin and raising a bead of blood. Her fingers twitched, and the metal retracted smoothly.

“Nice,” Kovacs allowed, absently wiping the blood on his sleeve. He headed straight for the fridge, looking for anything that would fuel his resource-strapped body.

Dreiberg paid her for her assistance out of the well protected trust fund his father had managed to hide from his bank. She spent every bank unit on her own upgrades, on secret weapons. Laurie dreamed of really kicking ass, in the alleys instead of cyberspace. Like her despised father.

“You okay, Dan?” She wiped the cold sweat from his face and loosened his sweatervest. Kovacs ground his teeth around a mouthful of leftover yakitori.

“Fine, fine,” he insisted. “Thirsty.”

Laurie got a glass of water from the tap, but Kovacs pushed it away from Dreiberg, putting a sports drink in his hand instead. “Electrolytes,” he grunted, and Dreiberg thought his eyes shifted triumphantly toward Laurie as he cracked open the top and drank half in one gulp.

If Kovacs still had eyes.

“If you’re feeling okay, then,” Laurie began, lighting up another cigarette and blowing smoke toward Kovacs’ side of the table, “I might have a job for us.”

Kovacs perked up at that, pausing with a forkful of noodles almost at his lips. “What’s that?” he asked, already eager for his next fix.

“Blake’s dead,” Laurie announced.

“What? When?” Dreiberg gasped.

“I know,” Kovacs replied. “I’m monitoring the funeral right now. ”

“You’re monitoring it? How?” Dreiberg rubbed his forehead like it was splitting in two.

“Harry set up the feed,” Kovacs said, mouth full, and Laurie looked away. “Messaged me this morning with tip.”

“Is my mother there?” Laurie asked, wondering how much Harry’s “free” tip would cost her and Dan. Harry was the best snitch in the Brooklyn dome, with contacts from Bangor to Atlanta. He had the information and a near-psychic ability to dangle the data in front of exactly the person who didn’t know they needed it, and was paid handsomely for his skills. Except by Kovacs, who got information by terrorising him and his other customers. He charged Kovacs’s partners twice as much to make up for the shortfall.

Kovacs’s head tilted as he enlarged the feed and scanned through the faces. “No.”

“Good.” The last thing Laurie needed was her mother making a scene and filling the media with yet another 24-hour rehash of Laurie’s scandalous genesis. “Only top-level representatives present. Cemetery cordoned off. No reports in any media. Seems megacorporations reluctant to lose spectre of their boogieman.”

“How’d you hear about this?” Dreiberg asked.

“My mother, of course,” Laurie sighed. “She called this morning, insisted he’d been murdered and someone is covering up the whole shebang. She tried to use it as leverage, of course, play on my daughterly sympathies to get me back in San Diego with her, but I could tell she’s genuinely upset underneath.”

Dreiberg touched her hand. “You okay?”

Kovacs’ thin mouth twisted. “Veidt currently giving eulogy.”

Laurie tapped the side of his head. “Can you make this thing project?”

Kovacs pulled away from her fingertips and nodded, punching the configuration into his temple. The blue-tinted image of the world’s richest conglomo-magnate solidified on the kitchen table with a snap. His face – still the too-smooth beauty he’d worn at 15, when they’d first worked together – was appropriately solemn, even permitting a fine line or two underneath the eyes.

“…pragmatic, yes, sometimes too pragmatic, even mercenary, but no one can doubt today that our companies, and the world, have lost a powerful force for good. And in these dangerous times, we can ill afford to be without him, and those like him. You’ve earned your rest, my friend, but the world is a less…human…place, today.”

Kovacs snorted and shut off the projection.

“Hey!” Laurie protested.

“Makes my brain itch,” he grunted back.

“Oh, so you’ve actually got – ”

“Children,” Dreiberg began, his lips twitching when both partners turned their glares on him. “Focus.”

“Rumor on the wire is that he was murdered. Perhaps your mother started it.”

“My mother heard suicide,” Laurie interrupted. “She didn’t believe it.”

“Found on the sidewalk in front of his building. Body cleared away within three minutes, according to Harry. Stinks of an inside job.”

“He had a lot of enemies,” Dreiberg said softly, as if he was trying to convince himself. “Most of the corporations he worked for, in fact. There were none he hadn’t double-crossed, for one of his other employers or just for kicks.”

“We should investigate,” Kovacs insisted. “One of our own.”

“One of yours, maybe,” Laurie snorted. “That goddamn psychopath – if Jon hadn’t let it slip that…well…if I didn’t know that, I might have gone after him myself, for what he did to my mother.”

Dreiberg reached for her hand again, but she pulled it away.

“I’ve got to check in with Mason. He might know something and, if he doesn’t, someone should tell him. Blake was his protégé, for a while.”

“No,” Kovacs insisted, pushing him back into his seat. “Too soon. You need sleep. Food.”

“But I – ”

“Sleep,” he growled. “I’ll investigate in the meantime.”

“If you’re going to see the Mystic first, I’ll come with,” Laurie said, putting on her coat. “I’m low on smokes. Dan, I…er…I need my money.”

“Oh, sure, sure – sorry, Laurie. I should have – ”

Dreiberg pulled a small toolbox out from under the sink and began unscrewing the handles from each implement. Worn, dirty bills were rolled inside each.

“Here. That’s most of it, anyway, and I should be able to get more currency later this week.”

Laurie counted and nodded at the total. “It’s enough for now. You coming, K?”

Kovacs grunted and probably glared at her. It was hard to tell, since his mouth was always set in a dead white line when he looked in her direction.

“One moment, Miss Isham.”

She’d never seen him wearing less than three layers, insulation for his thin, starving frame, but to go out, he added two leather jackets and a thick pair of gloves. They hid the glowing fiber optic lines under his skin and the data pads imbedded in each fingertip. With a hat pulled low, his face plate could pass for a normal vr visor worn as a fashion accessory.

“Sleep,” he admonished Dreiberg again, and swept out the front door. Laurie was amused to note that he held the door for her, almost letting it slam back in her face but catching it at the last second. 

“Thanks, K!” she said cheerfully, enjoying the way his face tightened even further. He turned away from her, tapping a long line of code into the lock before stalking down the street. They both leaned into the wind, shielding their faces from grit and larger debris.

Laurie counted up the days and thought that it might be early October. Not that it mattered, when every day was the same in the city. Little light filtered through the filthy, half-finished dome, and the even lines of skyscrapers turned streets into perpetual wind tunnels. California was better, at least outside LA, but quirks of the smog-addled weather patterns could still leave an unwary wanderer flash-fried or frozen if they wandered too far from the controlled areas. She almost preferred the everlasting hostility of the Sprawl’s climate. At least you always knew what to expect.

They didn’t speak during the long walk, made longer by Laurie and Kovacs’ different definitions of what made a route “safe.” Laurie preferred alleys. Kovacs went for the rooftops. Wordlessly, they compromised, and took both.

“Oh no, not him,” the Mystic shrieked when they stepped through the smoking remains of his security door.

“Should have answered the buzzer,” Kovacs replied.

“You can stay, not him!” the Mystic told her, and Laurie carefully palmed the now useless detonator. She’d give Dreiberg two thumbs up on his latest explosives refinement, when they returned. It had blown the door’s seals without even shaking the walls.

“Moloch, come on – he was just worried when you didn’t answer. After what happened to Blake yesterday, we’re, you know, a little on edge.”

The Mystic only grunted and levered the secondary door shut, blocking out the light. Laurie looked around the dim room, noting the jumble of near-junk he displayed for sale to the rubes. All the good stuff was well hidden, behind barriers and combinations that would take even Kovacs days to decrypt. The Mystic was an old man in a very young man’s game, the living embodiment of ‘survival of the fittest.’ 

“Good news travels fast.”

Kovacs tugged off his gloves. “The death of a good man is – ”

“I need some more smokes,” Laurie interrupted, shooting the man a shutthefuckup look. “And…one of your specialties. I have cash.”

Moloch nodded reluctantly. “Come on then. And you – don’t touch anything!”

Laurie looked over her shoulder as she entered Moloch’s inner sanctum to see Kovacs touching everything, quickly scanning any working equipment for information. It would keep him busy while she took care of something she’d been wanting for ages.

Forty minutes later, she emerged with a carton of German cigarettes under her arm and shiny mirror lenses over her priceless – and too damn recognisable – eyes. They itched where the Mystic had sunk them into the rims of her sockets, but Moloch had said that would pass when the swelling went down. She looked in both corners and twitched her eyelids the way he’d shown her, shifting the filters from normal to infrared to ultraviolet.

Kovacs had rearranged Moloch’s collection of yokel crap into three piles – Laurie snickered at yet another manifestation of his techie OCD – and was absentmindedly picking through the smallest one. He turned at her approach and gasped.

“What do you think?” Laurie teased, twitching her vision back to ‘normal.’ She stepped close, turning her head so he could see the edges of each lens. She saw in his mirrored laminate an infinity of Lauries regressing into an infinity of Kovacses, and her stomach tightened.

She was glad when he grunted and turned away first.

“They’re shatterproof,” she enthused. “To protect and hide my eyes. And I’ll be able to see across a huge range of wavelengths when they’ve fully healed.”

“Looks like you don’t have any eyes,” he muttered. “Let’s go.”

“Don’t you want to question the Mystic?”

“No,” he replied, struggling with the heavier secondary door. Laurie snorted and yanked it aside for him, following him out into the street.

It had to be getting close to business hours – Laurie had been shocked at how quickly she lost any sense of time, in the perpetual grey – and the streets were filling up. They cut through the crowds, trusting the mass’s anonymity for camouflage. Laurie flipped to infrared and marvelled at the shift of heat inside the bodies that passed.

Kovacs jerked his chin toward a row of stalls. “Breakfast,” he grunted.

Laurie shrugged. She tried to watch the opening of an alley near them without turning her head. Something about the way the heat signatures shifted there tugged at her eyes.

Kovacs’ stomach growled, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the crowd. “Breakfast,” he insisted, and Laurie remembered that he refused to carry a charge card.

“Oh, fine,” she snorted, and ordered him a box of vindaloo noodles, paying with the dregs of her contraband cash instead of her charge card. There was no reason to risk using cash out here on the streets even this far from the legitimate main drags, but some of her partners’ shared paranoia made her feel better when she was hard to track. He leaned against a building and slurped down pasta without pausing to chew. Laurie wondered if his throat was lined with asbestos, gulping when she realised it very well could be.

“Being followed,” he said, ducking his head to shovel in another mouthful.

Laurie nodded and stole a noodle. It made her lips and fingers burn before it even touched her tongue. She tucked the carton under her shirt and cinched her belt tight around it. “Across the street.”

“And down the block. At least two.”

He tipped the last of the broth into his mouth and dropped the box. “Let’s go.”

They faded back into the alley and up an antiquated fire escape. From the top of that building, they jumped to another, then to another. Kovacs was like a flying squirrel when he went over, Laurie thought, just a wisp gliding on the layers of his clothing. It was too distracting to run with the infrared on, so she flicked it to normal, shifting back when she paused to look behind them.

“Don’t!” he hissed, grabbing her arm. “They’re gaining!”

The Mystic’s place was in a lousy neighbourhood, nearly at the edge of the dome. She had an idea. “This way!”

They cut diagonally across two more buildings and reached an old tenement. Its antenna-topped roof almost touched the slanting ridge of the dome. She reached out and grabbed the lowest rafter, dragging her body up into the structural supports.

“Wait!” Kovacs said, gasping for breath. “The – people – up there…”

“Relax,” she almost smiled, “I’m welcome everywhere.”

They’d made it up a quarter-mile over the city before they were challenged, white-knuckling across beams and rusted struts, close enough to touch the dome itself. The copolymer surface was brown with generations of graffiti.

“Hola, strangers!” the teenager called to them from directly above and dropped down to their level. He landed on the six-inch beam neatly, nearly on their fingers. Kovacs growled and inched back, fingers flicking on an imaginary keyboard.

Laurie forced herself to stand and grinned. “Hi, yourself!” she replied, taking off her hat and letting her long, trademark hair whip behind her.

The boy gasped. “You’re Sally Isham’s kid!”

Laurie forced herself not to sigh. Or jump off the beam and be done with it.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

After making himself an enormous breakfast, Dreiberg managed a twenty-minute nap, maybe, and that only from sheer exhaustion. He cursed Blake’s soul for dying at such an inconvenient time and changed back out of his pyjamas, stomping down to the basement and setting up his equipment to jack in. He made coffee and waited for the first cup to cool before giving in to temptation and putting the visor over his head.

Kovacs hated it when Dreiberg went in without back-up – the big hypocrite, given that he never left cyberspace and wouldn’t let Dreiberg attach so much as an electrode to his sunken chest. They had that argument at least once a week – Dreiberg pointing out that cowboys were solitary by nature and nearly everyone he knew went under keeping a weather eye on their own vitals. And Kovacs insisted that most cowboys were just looking for a quick fix or cash diversion, that white hats went after the dangerous targets, taking real risks. And on and on and on.

He still jumped guiltily when the priority message immediately swam in front of his inside face, emblazoned with their shared id code. Kovacs had known Dreiberg couldn’t wait for him, was too weak to stay away even a few hours.

Instead of the reprimand Dreiberg expected, he found a simple message: _Danger. Going to ground. Don’t answer door._

Despite his exhaustion, the words sent a happy frission through him. Whatever they’d stumbled onto, it had to be big if they were already under threat.

_Wilco_ , he sent back, pleased that, for once, the message hadn’t included an addendum that Dreiberg get offline and back to bed or face the consequences. He ducked offline anyway, for a moment, just to take a few deep breaths and run his fingers over his professional keyboard, the keys unlabelled and grey with use.

Where first? Mason, still Mason.

He jumped back in, checked and promptly forgot about his vitals, then punched in Mason’s coordinates.

* * *

The kid’s name was D’Arby, Laurie learned, and he was the leader of the small gang that quickly descended on them, swinging like lean monkeys. Laurie signed a few autographs and told D’Arby she and her techie were scouting locations for an avant-garde holo, a series out on the real edge of things. Kovacs hung around the edges of the crowd that tried to suck him in, looking deeply uncomfortable at the attention. It was a brilliant imitation of every production techie Laurie had ever worked with, she smirked to herself.

D’Arby tried to play it cool, but it was like a switch had been flipped inside him at the idea of holo filming in his territory. Laurie had to admit that the kid had a spark of the stuff a holostar needed, the narcissistic, neurotic fearlessness to entice an audience of billions to step into your very nerves. Not to mention the scrawny physique and high cheekbones a camera loved. The rest of it, the tattoos that eeled around his limbs, the prosthetic animal teeth rammed into his jaw, the split nostrils – they could be fixed in an afternoon by any half-trained plastician.

Or not – maybe the fashion world was ready for a neo-primitive wave.

She gave him her former agent’s private contact details and a message – “this squares us, Larry” – and in return D’Arby led them into the upper levels. Kovacs waited at the gate until he was satisfied their tail hadn’t followed them into the heights. Laurie thought he also just wanted to get his breath back in relative privacy.

He spoke at length with D’Arby’s right-hand girl, slapping her hand away every time it reached out of its own accord and poked his laminate face. Finally, he returned to Laurie, extracting her from the small crowd of playful savages demanding to know what her mother was like, really. She felt sorry for them – they were hiding away from the technological boom that didn’t want them, rejected even the smallest benefits of it, but they’d all grown up with pirated Sally Isham holos pumped into their skulls from the moment their toddler-sized jacks were installed. They couldn’t even pretend they weren’t thrilled to brush their fingers against part of the woman who’d been more than mother to them.

“Have learned the way down,” Kovacs said, “let’s go.”

* * *

Dreiberg’s projection knocked on the revolving box, about the size of a hard drive, that contained his old mentor.

“Well, hello there, little cowpoke,” the box replied to his touch, unfolding and shifting until Dreiberg was looking at Mason’s face, etched in starlight, big as Orion in the greyness surrounding them.

“Hollis…”

“Heh. Just a joke. It’s good to see you, white hat. What do you need?”

Most projections looked like idealised versions of the hardware jock. Or tigers, for some reason. Cowboys just loved tigers. On the inside, Daniel looked like he had at 15, tall and strong and long-legged, and more than a little like the old Western stars he’d idolised as a kid. It’d be unthinkable to upgrade his image with the 40 or so kilos he’d put on since then, the thick flesh dragging down his perfect nerves. Mason, on the other hand, had reproduced in stars every line that had marred his nearly 50-year-old face when he flatlined.

“Why do you think I need anything?” Dreiberg hemmed.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” The stars shifted into a gentle smile, and Dreiberg resisted the urge to scuff the non-existent ground.

“I came to tell you about Blake,” he replied. “He’s – ”

“Dead. Yes, I heard.” The starlight sighed, exhaling a Milky Way that drifted over Dreiberg’s head and disappeared. “They finally got him.”

“Do you know who?”

“No. Just that it was something so big no one’s naming names, even way out here.”

“Oh,” Dreiberg replied, disappointed. It was silly, but he still expected his old mentor to pull the rabbit out of his hat every time, as if the man wasn’t as human as himself. Well, he wasn’t, not technically. Not any more.

A splinter of the Gordian-Knot megacorp had taken him out a few years ago, after Mason had retired. It was a case of mistaken identity, stupid and pointless – they’d fried him when he accessed his own account to buy a baby shower gift for a young friend in the neighborhood, for god’s sake. Left him a cinder on the floor of his own living room, his beer slowly going flat on the table above. 

Dreiberg would admit he’d gone a little crazy. They’d burned the entire G-K corporation, bad, punching a solid quarter’s earnings into the untouchable sink of the Roman C’s Vatican holdings. G-K’s stock had plummeted, and they were bought out by Veidt-Ashpool on Wednesday for a fraction of their Monday worth. Most of the executives were quietly disappeared soon after.

That was the first time Laurie worked with them, and for free, enraged over the loss of her adopted uncle. She was mollified after their reign of terror, able to move on to just grieving, but Dreiberg wasn’t. He knew it couldn’t have ended that way. 

Mason was online when they got him. He’d have made plans, would have been ready for them – he’d always been one of the fighters. He had to be out there, somehow, just playing possum. Dreiberg looked, first slamming through the wreckage of the G-K, then racing through every megacorp Mason had opposed in the old days, careless with rage. When Kovacs couldn’t dissuade him, he took over, brutally beating his way into pristine databases with his trademark viciousness, leaving electronic fingerprints everywhere. That was usually the difference between the two partners. Kovacs wanted them to know who’d beaten them. Dreiberg felt it was more important to live to fight another day. Usually.

They found him together, finally, tucked away in Mothercare, nestled in the tax return archives. His unfinished order – a cheap wifi-enabled crib – covered him.

Dreiberg tried every one of algorithms he could remember Mason teaching him, but it wasn’t until Kovacs pushed him away and punched in D-A-N-I-E-L that the program came to life, spitting out Mason’s image. The disembodied head screamed for a full 12 seconds before processing its new state.

Dreiberg had tried not to be haunted by that sound. If he was suddenly more tolerant of his partner’s obsessive mother-henning every time he went under, it was unrelated.

“You’re investigating?” Mason asked, interrupting his thoughts.

“Yes,” he replied. “I’m not sure why. Kovacs thinks it’s fishy. And since he’s already being threatened, he’s probably right.”

“I’ll do what I can here,” Mason said.

“Thanks, Hollis. I really appreciate that.”

“What the hell else do I have to do?” the starlight replied, with as much bitterness as a stretch of binary code could generate.

“Laurie sends her love,” Dreiberg said quickly.

“Does she?” The program smiled. “How is my pumpkin?”

“Good, really good. She’s learning the ropes so quickly, turning, you know, into a good version of her dad. Or like you, more accurately. You’d be proud.”

“You look out for her,” the starlight admonished. “You know how quickly it can go bad…”

Dreiberg settled in, keeping a weather eye out for another message from his partner. He had a few seconds to kill, and anyway, he loved the old stories. And this was his favourite, the one that started: _In the beginning…_

* * *

_In the beginning, it was the goddamn criminals. Before anyone else had gotten their head about paper turning into electronic blip-bloops you could see on a screen, the criminals were sneaking in and running off with people’s entire life savings. And since no one in the department could explain exactly how money had become hash marks in glowing pixels to begin with, no one even knew where to start looking or how to bring them back._

_I wasn’t the first to figure it out and try to beat them at their own game – that was Müller, in Dresden, but I learned from him. Before I could even reach out to contact him, though, I spent a month of nights in the department database, learning it inside and out, figuring out how to move the little numbers around myself without making my eyeballs vibrate out of my head. God, you should have seen the things we had to use back then – helmet as big as your torso and twice as delicate, and that was when you had to bring it with you and break into the server’s building. The level of tech you bring to the fight now was the stuff of dreams, back then._

_There was By, with his incredible custom rig, Zandt and Gardner and of course Blake, and even that mad Dollar guy the banks actually hired as a publicity stunt. He was a good kid, well meaning, but he was all flash, no speed. Sally, too, was a great cowgirl to have at your back, even if most of her big hacks were set up by her agent in advance._

_We did a lot of good, separately, and the media loved us. We were heroes. It should have stayed that way, but even people as naturally unsociable as cowboys will gravitate together. We had a few good months, taking down the Axis Corporation together, but then it all started to turn ugly. The war in Russia was part of it, and Blake was another big chunk of nastiness, but mostly…_

_Dan, we’re just not meant to be here. Not in this sterile wasteland. We’re trying to make it into a new and better home, leave the mess we’ve made behind, and it’s killing us…_

* * *

They came down in a different lousy neighborhood, Kovacs’ stomach grumbling in Laurie’s ears the whole way. His skin was white and clammy when they finally touched down to the street, but he rejected the hand Laurie tried to lay on his cheek and grimly set off. Laurie followed through the hive of tiny streets, recognising one of the oldest and dirtiest parts of the city. It bordered on one of the grimmer red light districts, and the shifting neon lighting up the dome a few blocks away made these streets even more pathetically dingy in comparison.

He led them in a roundabout way to a building marked THRIFT HOTEL and climbed the fire escape. Laurie’s stomach sank when she saw the rows of coffins set up on the roof, the cheapest of cheap accommodation. There were ten rows of them, stacked high and welded together with old scaffolding platforms. Kovacs climbed to one of the top corner coffins, let the keypad scan his palm, and opened the hatch.

Inside, Laurie could almost stand, her shoes sinking into the temperfoam slab that was meant to be both futon and flooring. She spread her arms and touched both sides. Kovacs settled a few yards away from her, leaning on the back wall.

“You live here?” she asked, failing to keep the horror out of her voice.

He nodded, ramming his hands into his pockets and staring at his feet. “Safe,” he muttered. “Best to stay off streets for a few hours. Let pursuers overreach, reveal themselves.”

Laurie shoved some loose components to the side and carefully sat in the space she’d made. The coffin was certainly safe from anyone seeking the terror of the criminal cyberworld. Laurie had always imagined he lived in some sort of fantastic underground hideout, crammed wall-to-wall with surveillance equipment. Not in a glorified storage container. It smelled terrible, like mold and sweat and something inhuman, probably toxic chemistry leaching out of the plastiform walls. It was already giving her a headache. She fished the carton of cigarettes out of her shirt and opened a new pack.

Kovacs made a face. “Don’t want to do that.”

She lit up defiantly. “Why?”

He shrugged and reached up to open the tiny mesh window behind him, letting in a dribble of fresher air. “Will find out.”

Laurie shook her head, sucking in smoke like her life depended on it. As if she could make this hobbit hole smell any worse!

She was tempted to light a new one from the end of her old, but decided she’d made her point. And the coffin did smell slightly better. Even if the smoke wasn’t dispelling nearly as quickly as it should…

“Dammit,” she muttered, and fished the micro-cloth the Mystic had given her out of her pocket to wipe away the greasy haze the smoke had left on her new shades.

Rorschach, meanwhile, had opened a Styrofoam container and taken out two ration bars. He hesitated, then flipped one over to her. He rubbed at the film of nicotine on his own laminate with his sleeve, but didn’t say “I told you so.”

“Thanks,” she made herself respond, and he nodded, quickly devouring his own. It tasted like syrup-soaked cardboard, but she choked it down. It had been at least twelve hours since she’d eaten more than a stolen noodle, and her stomach was starting to harmonise with Kovacs’. She handed the wrapper back to him – it was digestible fibre, coated on both sides with a waterproof sucrose glaze, and she wasn’t surprised to see him wolf down both of them.

Laurie looked around the coffin, hoping to find something to compliment. Anything that could be a conversation piece. The little troll had cared enough about her safety to compromise his own paranoia, bring her to his own ultra-secret den. Even Dreiberg didn’t know where Kovacs disappeared to, when he’d eaten the cupboards bare. She at least owed him a little politeness in return.

Too bad she couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t their usual sparring. “Nice craphole you’ve got here, perfect for a murder-suicide,” was the best option that came to mind so far.

* * *

_Dan…_

The voice was amused, and came from very far away. Dreiberg struggled to wake up, feeling the cracked leather of Hollis’ couch under his cheek and the scratchy edge of the ancient afghan on his chin. He’d conked out again, unable to keep up with the old man’s marathon grind. Shit. He was gonna be out on his ass this time for sure…who wanted to work with slow, stupid Danny Dreiberg anyway?

_Cripes, white hat, you’ve let yourself go._

_Huh?_

Dreiberg felt the couch dissolve under him and broke the surface into consciousness. “Wha?” he managed.

“It’s a new look, I’ll give you that. Certainly…unique…in these parts.”

Dreiberg fashioned a mirror out of the ether and groaned. As he’d slept, he’d semiconsciously remade his projection, adding those 40 kilos, at least, and subtracting a foot of height. He looked like a melting snowman, all his worries as his skin.

He yawned, feeling foolish. There were no bodily reflexes in cyberspace, but it felt better to go through the motions than not. “I’ll fix it. When I get time. It’s not important what I look like, right?”

“You looked like a fat little angel,” the starman smiled. “All curled up under Grandma Henry’s afghan. Whatever happened to that, anyway?”

“It’s on the guest bed,” Dreiberg sighed, turning the mirror and swivelling his head 180 degrees to look at his new butt. It sagged halfway to his knees. “At least I got some zzz’s out of the way. Must have been, what, at least six hours?”

“In here, sure,” Mason snorted. “Out there, ten minutes, give or take?”

“God, Hollis,” Dreiberg moaned. “I’m losing it. I’m really fucking losing it.”

“Dan…”

“I’m slow as a cement mixer. The only edge I’ve got right now is experience, and my special tech upgrades, and every day I still lose ground to the young guns the megacorps bring in. They don’t know a thing, but with their wired-up nerves, they could catch a mosquito’s fart with an eyelash from the other side of the world. I can’t keep doing this.”

“Dan…”

“Is it too late to pack it in and have a normal life? Hell. I know it is. But this is going to kill me.”

Mason poked Dreiberg with the snowflake he’d been trying to hand him for several seconds. “You need a nap. A real, meaty, nap. And a good meal. Maybe a salad,” he smirked gently.

“But before that, go see your old friend Veidt. Something’s making a beeline for him, and I’ve got the only specs I could dredge up here for you here. You’ll have to make a physical copy and hand it to him, because whatever this is, it’s wiping out everything that comes near it.”

Dreiberg pulled himself together – literally, in the case of his rear, which he wasted precious seconds re-molding into something butt-shaped – and took the data. “Thanks, Mason.”

“And – Dan,” the starman hesitated, “Don’t stay away so long next time, okay? Hell, you can siesta online here every day; I’ll bore you to sleep and keep the vultures away. It’s just – when you’re not here…I take in data and spit out probabilities, but I’m not…me. Might as well be a megacorp accounting drone.”

“Hey,” Dreiberg grinned uncomfortably, “I’ll be back later today, with whatever I can get from Veidt. These kicks in the ass are what keep me going.”

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

“Lost track of Daniel,” Kovacs grunted, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “Up there, no network at all, nothing!”

“They’re Luddites, K, that’s kind of their whole thing. Off the grid, back to nature…or something like it, anyway.”

He shook his head, agitated. “Disconnected. He was with Mason, was safe. Now, can’t find him. Not at home, not online.”

“Maybe he’s just sleeping, like you told him,” Laurie said, but didn’t believe her own words. Dreiberg might look like a human teddy bear, but could be as tenacious as Kovacs when he got his teeth into something.

“Shouldn’t have left him alone.”

“He’s sleeping,” she insisted. “He was wrecked when we left. Keep an eye out, and he’ll pop on in a few hours.”

“Hrmm,” he mumbled, clearly not convinced. He stared at her for several moments – Laurie was somehow sure he wasn’t blinking, behind the laminate – before coming to a decision and fishing a small black box out of his jacket.

“What’s that?”

“Found it at the Mystic’s. Not covered in dust, like the rest, but new. Kicked under a shelf. Writing’s Cyrillic.”

“Russian?” She held out her hand, and after a moment, he let her examine it. There were ports on each end, but nothing else that revealed its purpose. “Blake’s always preferred to use their tech, since the war. Can you read this?”

Kovacs took the box back and dug a handful of chips out of his jacket pocket. He chose a green one and slotted it in over his ear. “Я могу читать это сейчас,” he replied.

Laurie shivered at the unfamiliar syllables coming out in Kovacs’s usual growl. “Whatever.”

Did his lips twitch into a smile, for just a moment? “Вы бы лучше держать вашу когти из моего партнера. Он хороший человек,” he replied tonelessly.

“Yeah, yeah. What does it say?”

Kovacs shrugged and removed the language chip. “Nothing illuminating. Mostly nonsense, probably serial codes. This – ” he pointed at “кальмар” – “translates as ‘squid,’ but that could be more code. Going to access it.”

“That’s insane. You don’t know what this thing is. What if it was left there by one of Moloch’s enemies, something to fry his brains when curiosity got the better of him and he looked inside?”

He ignored her and re-inserted the chip, removing his gloves. He licked the data pad on his index finger and touched one of the ports as casually as Laurie would pick up a contact lens. She winced, but when nothing exploded, she shifted closer to watch the backwards data moving under the mirrored surface of his laminate. After he’d been under for thirty seconds, she touched his neck, but his pulse was still strong.

At sixty seconds, his nose began to bleed.

Laurie yanked his hand away from the box and scrambled in the styrofoam container, finding more ration bars and a few bottles of the sickly-sweet sports drink he seemed to live on. She opened one of those and shoved it into his shaking hands.

“C’mon, drink,” she said, wishing she could check his pupils’ dilatation. She mopped at the blood dribbling down his lips with her microcloth. “You’re home, you’re safe.”

Time was funny when you went under. Laurie had hated that almost as much as the blank grey slate of cyberspace, the way that you resurfaced after what felt like days and found that your mother’s expression hadn’t even had time to sour since you first plugged in. A minute had passed, but he could have been gone for a week and forgotten where he’d left off in what he contemptuously called the meat world.

“мамаша?” he mumbled, pushing at her hands and letting the bottle slide away.

Laurie caught it without losing a drop and reached behind his ear – carefully, expecting a shock – and yanked out the language chip, immediately losing it in the mess on Kovacs’ floor.

“Lay back,” she ordered, and for a wonder, he did, leaning on the curved wall. He licked fitfully at the blood on his lips. She tilted his head back, stuffed the corners of her cloth up his nostrils, and forced his mouth open.

“Don’t choke,” she said, dribbling some of the revolting purple liquid between his lips, and of course he did. He sputtered and tried to sit up, but she forced him back down.

“Sit still and drink some of this. You could be having a goddamn aneurism, but all I’ve got to offer is your precious electrolytes.”

He nodded, coughing, and suffered through half the bottle, sip by sip. He pushed her away then, but more politely, and Laurie was annoyed that she immediately knew the difference between “I’d throw you in the Hudson if Dreiberg wouldn’t sulk over it” and “please stop touching me now, thank you in advance.” She was getting more like her mother every night.

“You owe me a new microcloth,” she informed him softly, which was as close to “you’re welcome” as she could come with Kovacs.

“Blake is in there,” he rasped, mopping at his nose. “No. Not Blake, not like Mason, but recording and data for Moloch.”

He paused, tilting his head. “Weeping. Blake was weeping.”

“Blake?” Laurie tried to picture the bastard in tears, and couldn’t do it. Her erstwhile father had fancied himself a sort of comedian, and had reacted to every possible stimulus with violence or hilarity. Usually both at once.

“What did he say?”

Kovacs shook his head, grimacing in frustration. “Can’t remember. Was meant to kill Moloch. Some joke – confess, then kill witness. Shock damaged my memory. Need to go back in, but – ”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Need back-up,” he finished, looking at her hopefully.

“Nuh-uh,” Laurie replied. “I’m strictly meat-world now. I never had the knack for it, really.”

“Hmmm. As expected,” he grunted, then in a softer tone, “Still no sign of Daniel. But nothing out of ordinary in building’s external security footage.”

Laurie sighed. “He’s sleeping. Take a break before your frontal lobe melts out your eye sockets, okay? I’m not cleaning that up.”

Kovacs ignored her and drifted back into his own world, sipping at the syrupy drink and working through the rest of his ration bars. Laurie’s heartbeat slowly returned to something less the-natives-are-restless, and she talked to herself to pass the time, hoping to distract Kovacs and keep a lid on his paranoia.

An hour later, she’d worked through her early history: first rejecting her mother’s attempts to mold her into a white hat and rebelling with a fitness obsession, how those intense workouts became her first holos at 15, how she felt a few years later when she realised they were probably bought by dirty old men glorying in the movement of young flesh while they fondled their own man-boobs. Her holo career was dull and repetitive, even to her – be wired for lights-sound-action and do something fabulous, cut, be re-wired and do something else fabulous, cut, date this beautiful holostar Larry set her up with, date this other equally striking holostar Sally thought was perfect for her – so she skipped ahead to her decade-long relationship with Jon.

“He just, I don’t know, he’s just so impersonal. He’s lived and breathed illusions so long, there’s nothing real to him. I heard he checked into rehab for ‘exhaustion’ last week, and god help his therapists. They’re in for a wild fucking ride.”

She moved from the razor on her left ring finger to the one under her pinkie, carefully cleaning around the base. The adamantium was meant to be rust-proof, but anything that was encased in flesh and blood just got icky if you didn’t look after it.

“And, I mean, the sex was great – technically. It was like something out of a holo, because it was the same damn techniques he developed for the holos. It was so…German and efficient. It was nice to come every time – you’re a man, you don’t know how rare that is – but even that got boring. He tried to spice things up, presented himself as dozens of different men, even more than one at a time, but they were all exactly the same, perfect and hollow.”

She sighed. “The only times the illusions ever slipped were, sometimes, when he was sleeping. Only when he was having a particularly bad dream. Then, he was a 98-pound weakling with a bad comb-over, who farted and drooled in his sleep. And I loved that man. Maybe I’d have given up everything to actually get to fuck that guy, and make breakfast together and talk about stupid ordinary things. Bitch about, I don’t know, taxes or something. Whatever normal people get mad about.”

She laughed, picturing Jon even aware of his own bank accounts’ existence. Or breakfast, for that matter. Kovacs gurgled from the corner, where he was curled in the fetal position, covering his ears.

Laurie took pity on him. “Nothing from Dan, yet?”

He shook his head, weakly.

“Hey,” she began awkwardly, “If we’re going to be here much longer, I’m going to need to, you know, use the facilities. Where’s the bathroom for these coffins?”

He shrugged. “Isn’t one.”

“You’re fucking kidding me. Please tell me that’s one of your weird little jokes.”

“No.”

“Then what do you do, hold it until you get to Dan’s?”

“…yes.”

“You must have a steel bladder, then, because…oh god, you haven’t actually got a steel bladder installed, have you?”

“No!” He looked offended at the idea. “Synthetic organs are…expensive. And pointless, when originals function adequately. Mere vanity.”

“Ah,” she said, and couldn’t resist nudging his thigh. “So, you’re like, intact under there? Haven’t replaced it with a spare floppy disk?”

He squirmed away and turned to face the wall. “…yes.”

“Heh. I guess I owe Dan ten bu, then.”

Kovacs muttered about deviance under his breath, but Laurie could see the back of his neck, hell, even his wrists, turning bright red. She was struck by the baffling urge to yank away his layers and see how far down the color went.

“You should take your own advice and get some sleep. It’s not like you can walk ten feet, let alone get back to Daniel’s,” she advised, feeling her own eyelids droop. It occurred to her that she could have them closed, or even be sleeping herself, and Kovacs would have no idea.

She was starting to understand the appeal of his mask-like laminate.

“Don’t,” he grunted.

“Hey,” she said, “I’m just trying to help. You look dead on your ass.”

He grimaced. “Don’t sleep,” he clarified.

“Could you try that again with a pronoun or two? You’re not saving any bandwidth in here, you know.”

“I. Don’t sleep.”

Laurie couldn’t believe it. “What, never?”

“Waste of time.”

“K, you need to sleep. All humans do. The brain has to, to process things. And recharge. No wonder you’re batshit.”

“Endocrine supplements more efficient when taken continuously. Body has adequate fuel at all times to continue.”

“I haven’t seen you take any since we’ve been here.”

He wavered at that. “Left at Daniel’s. Safer than storing here.”

“What, the boy scout who doesn’t even put poppers in his temple lets you keep the heavy stuff at his place?”

Kovacs scowled. “Hidden. Flushes them every time he finds them.”

“Ha! That’s Dan for ya.”

“Am…tired,” he admitted. “Food not sufficient. But must keep looking for Daniel. He may need help.”

“I’ll look for him. I can do that much online without bungling it.”

“No spare equipment.”

Laurie sighed and tapped his skull. “You’re walking hardware. Wire me into you.”

The flush on his skin that had begun to recede returned with a vengeance, as if she’d suggested something unbelievably filthy. She held up her hands.

“I’m not trying to get into your…er…brains. I don’t think that’s even possible. It’s the best solution we’ve got – hey, if you let yourself stay this exhausted and Dan does need help, you’ll be useless. Do you want to leave Dan without back-up?”

“Shameless ploy,” he muttered. “Keep pop psychology to self.”

He ruined the hard-man affect by yawning through the final word. Laurie raised one eyebrow, unconsciously imitating her mother’s Pert Expression #4 (For When Male Lead Is Veering Off Script), and peeled away the synthskin covering the jack in her left wrist. “Hook me in before you pass out,” she demanded.

Kovacs growled but reached into the mess on his floor without looking and produced a length of cable. He jabbed one end into her wrist without touching her skin, and Laurie shivered at the brief shock of static electricity that shot up to her elbow. She reluctantly pictured the delicate filaments along her own nerves, designed to capture and enhance sensation – the exact opposite of Kovacs’ virtual armor. No heroics in cyberspace, she reminded herself sternly. Out there, she was nothing but bait on a hook.

She couldn’t imagine how her mother had ever endured it, leaping in to fight the bad guys completely exposed, with every nerve lit up like Christmas and recording. Sure, she’d had Hollis and the rest at her back, but one good blast…

Kovacs changed some settings through the datapad on his temple and visibly steeled himself before sliding the cable into the base of his skull. Laurie gritted her teeth, tasting copper, and shuddered while the snap of connection worked through her bones.

“Ooooooh, that’s unpleasant,” she murmured.

Kovacs grunted and refrained from pointing out the lack of a chequered blanket and basket of al fresco edibles on his end of the wire. Laurie was creeped out at catching the edge of his thought and focused on her own projection, making it tight and impermeable. Hardware wasn’t really designed to be used by more than one person – it was physically possible for any number of techs to port in, but uncomfortable. Laurie felt like Kovacs was looking over her shoulder, breathing down her neck, while she did the same to him, and behind them another Kovacs and another Laurie and another Kovacs, an infinite chain of too-damn-closeness.

Laurie clamped down on the thought that Kovacs must have a serious man-love for his partner, if this cheek-to-cheek smash-up was preferable to possibly missing a message from Drieberg. She suspected a little trickled through anyway, as Kovacs stiffened and moved as far away as the cable would allow.

Projecting was tricky. It was best to come in with a mission, stay focused, then get out as soon as you’d completed it and before your mind started to drift to what you should have for lunch. If you lingered, the best disaster you could hope for was discovering your projection had changed to a giant banana; at worst, you’d find legmen for the megacorp you just burned waiting for you at the produce stand you’d decided to patronise. The human consciousness was just…leaky.

“Does Mason speak to you?” Kovacs asked, the words resonating, bizarrely, up through her arm. Of course, he wouldn’t bother vocalising when there was a quicker way.

“I don’t know,” she replied, surprised. “I’ve never tried. He’s, you know, dead, and I’ve mourned, and talking to what’s left of him…I just can’t make myself do it.”

“Try.”

There was a fleeting sensation of a hand grabbing hers, her own lips twisting in disgust, and then they were staring at a small box. It hummed to itself.

“Oh,” Laurie replied. “Um. Okay. What do I do?”

Her shoulders shrugged. “Daniel knocks.”

“Brrrr. Can you stop moving me around like a puppet? It’s giving me the willies.” Not half as much as the living grave in front of them, though. She nodded (the gesture cutting off abruptly as Kovacs shifted the nanometre or so away from her that was the limits of their shared mental space), shivered, and touched the box.

“Hollis? Uncle Hollis? It’s Laurie.”

Nothing. The box vibrated sickeningly underneath her hands, as if it was stuffed full of bees.

A sigh gusted in her ear, and they were abruptly elsewhere, another stretch of identical formless nothingness that was nonetheless obviously different, and far away, and her stomach wanted to turn inside-out and be worn as a shoe before it would take any more of this.

Laurie _really_ hated cyberspace.

“Only keyed to Daniel,” Kovacs said thoughtfully. “Suspected as much. Inconvenient, but safer from tampering.”

“Hmm,” Laurie replied, focused on _not_ puking. “If you say so. It’s still creepy. Echoing around cyberspace forever, no body to ever return to.”

“It’s perfect,” Kovacs shot back, then fell abruptly silent, and Laurie suspected he hadn’t meant to reply.

“Where are we now?”

“Safe here,” he said. “Usual message drop. Disused Veidt-Ashpool server.”

He hesitated, and Laurie briefly felt like her own teeth were gritting together before Kovacs remembered himself and forced out, “Daniel may also make contact here – ” they stretched together, limbs thinning to filaments “– or here,” the filaments looped, and Laurie nearly lost the struggle with her belly. “But most likely here. Can watch all three simultaneously.”

He pulled as far away as he was able, and Laurie opened her eyes to watch him slither out of both jackets, careful not to disturb their connection, and awkwardly drape them over his torso.

“It helps to lie down,” she vocalised, the words slow as refrigerated syrup.

“Hurm,” he muttered and cleared a space on the floor. He turned and wriggled until Laurie was ready to scream in annoyance, trying to find a position that didn’t rest on his neck jack or strangle him with the short cable.

Laurie crawled over to the small window, dragging the cord behind her, and lit up another cigarette. She suspected no amount of blowing would keep the smoke off her new shades, but it was the only distraction at hand to prevent her braining her partner with the closest blunt object. Which happened to be Blake’s little Russian death trap, so she’d not only be down her only available hardware but destroy their best avenue of investigation into the bastard’s death. 

She picked it up, carefully, tempted to peek despite what it had done to Kovacs. If it was a recalcitrant witness, she could break it easily, with charm or, if that failed, a vulnerable little finger. No waiting for the right prince to come along and waken the comatose mess of circuits and wire. Just one reason of millions she never regretted rejecting her mother’s way.

Kovacs finally settled down after what felt like hours – no, it had been thirty seconds at most, since her cigarette was still freshly lit; that was just the ghost-time of cyberspace creeping into her mind – but struggled against the unconsciousness that swamped him. _Daniel, Daniel, Daniel_ , he went on projecting, shuffling restlessly between the points he’d shown her, and it was easy to piggyback on his signal. The harmony of their dual projecting finally seemed to sooth him enough that his limbs went limp, his jaw slack and revealing a frighteningly ragged set of teeth.

She thought of orphanage medical care and tried not to be disgusted, tongue tracing the even lines of her own set. They’d been removed and re-set in her jaw twice, once as a young girl and again when her wisdom teeth undid the orthodontist’s hard hours of work. Her teeth had then been veneered, and cleaned and polished twice weekly by a small team that did nothing but monitor her and Sally’s dental condition. Without all that care…

Well, they still wouldn’t even approach those monstrous choppers. What did he teethe on, barbed wire?

The steady rhythm of their entwined projection was started to mellow her agitation as well. She flicked the butt out the window – hoping immediately afterward she hadn’t thrown it anywhere particularly flammable – and sat down next to Kovacs, carefully placing a hand on his shoulder as she felt him go fully under.

Which was when everything he’d been so desperately trying not to think about that it was foremost in his mind began to spool out into their shared space.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Russian translations: "I can read it now" and "Keep your nails out of my partner; he's a good man."


	4. Chapter 4

The first time Veidt saw Dreiberg was when he wanted to be seen, impatiently staring into a camouflaged off-grid security camera that fed directly to Veidt’s office. The cheeky bastard waved the very second Veidt noticed him.

Veidt sighed in mingled irritation and admiration and messaged his PA’s virtual calendar a brunch appointment and security pass for Dreiberg. He hadn’t gotten far, but he’d gotten much deeper than any civilian off the street should have been able to penetrate without the invasion force of a small nation.

Some of that was his knack for neatly disabling security without letting the larger network know it had been compromised. The man had an inexhaustible array of pre-fab viruses and could whip up a custom bug in seconds. He also had the benefit of not looking like he could, less the typical leather and rivets cyberpunk than a sweet-natured Ivy League nerd. If tweed still existed, Dreiberg would have every scrap on the planet stashed in his closet. No one could believe the doughy idler who looked half tourist and half maiden uncle could find his way anywhere he wasn’t supposed to be.

Veidt looked closer and smiled. Dreiberg was still carrying his father’s battered leather man-purse, for God’s sake, the strap digging diagonally into his soft torso. Veidt wouldn’t have believed this man was capable of burning a Yakuza-backed porn ring if he hadn’t observed it himself a few hours before, via observer-drone while he brushed his teeth. Dreiberg’s jaw was set and he idly played with an outer pocket as he sidled through three checkpoints, each more heavily guarded than the last.

Somehow, Veidt suspected Dreiberg wasn’t there to finally accept his long-standing job offer.

Veidt requested a selection of breakfast curries be sent up from the canteen and engaged the locks on his office door. He’d assumed Dreiberg would enjoy cracking them, but the man banged on the priceless walnut finish without even trying them.

“Really, Dreiberg,” Veidt began, buzzing him in, “You know I enjoy your little visits, but you could – ”

“Good,” Dreiberg interrupted, taking in the walls of monitors with a dismissive glance. “You’re not online. Here.”

“You’re not going to explain any of this, are you?” Veidt sighed, taking the disk Dreiberg pulled out of his purse.

“No time. If Hollis was right, the mother of all strikes should hit your holdings in just a few minutes, and it’s designed to burrow directly for you. Someone’s gunning for your head this time. Send the specs to your security gurus and – shit!”

Veidt had calmly slotted the disk and settled his slim VR rig on his temples.

“Veidt,” Dreiberg began warningly, but he’d already whipped out his own portable set and hooked it up. “All you have to do is stay out of the way of your own personal Fat Man. Someone’s gone to an insane amount of effort to reach you – ”

“Then it’s only polite to go and meet it, hmm?” Dreiberg’s clunky rig mashing down his curls hit Veidt with a distracting wave of nostalgia. That line had been one of his earliest pet projects, the first – and some would still say the best – proper GUI projector that didn’t slowly blow out the user’s dopamine receptors. His own was far superior technically (its de-fanged little siblings wouldn’t even hit the open market for another month), but less…cuddly.

He jacked in, Dreiberg on his figurative heels. Mason’s specs were superfluous; the data bomb nearly eclipsed the horizon, swamping neat rows of server data. His army of security techs surrounded it, but they were like gnats on a warthog’s back, crushed and blinking out one after another.

“Veidt Code Delta-Pi-Ramesses; recall all security forces immediately, repeat, recall all security forces immediately!”

“What are you – ”

“If this thing does take me out, which it won’t, I can’t very well have my entire security force laid up in the cerebral burn ward. The swoop of you cowboy vultures – no offence – would make the rush on Tessier Prime last year look like high tea with Mother Sciorre.”

He winced as a particularly stately server crumbled and called up his best offensive ciphers, the ones that destroyed as they comprehended. “Oh, damn, there went the Potterrow holdings; they were earmarked for the Siberian Chikungunya Victims Trust. Look over there, I need you to – what the hell did you do to yourself?”

The melted apparition of Dreiberg sighed and turned away, giving Veidt a view of the incongruously spectacular ass. “Is it…avant-garde?”

“Accident,” he replied shortly, and faced Veidt. “What’s your brilliant plan?”

“We…really, what – no, I mean, that containment unit there. We have to quarantine this. If you’re right, it’ll follow me. That’ll leave confining it to you.”

“You’ll be killed!”

“It’s killing my company right now. Two hundred years of my family’s lifeblood – I can be replaced, Dreiberg. That can’t.”

Veidt sent up an identity flare before Dreiberg could protest again. His suicidal plan seemed dead on arrival as the massive program only continued to eat through the quarterly report archive, but a second flare caught its attention. It moved nimbly, terrifyingly so for its size, and closed the distance between them in a heartbeat.

Veidt dove into the containment unit without a backwards glance, leaving Dreiberg on his own. He almost – almost – gave into the impulse to run for Kovacs or Hollis and return with the cavalry, but he barely had time to curse the entire Veidt lineage before the virus was upon them. It folded itself down as it moved to fit inside the barrier containing Target 0, probably the limits of its independent intelligence, and passed by so closely Dreiberg fancied he could feel its mute animal breath on his face. He wished again for back-up but the beast had nearly slipped over the threshold and there was no more time to think of everyone he was about to get killed. Thought fell away, leaving behind only cool anticipation.

He was going to _burn_ this thing.

* * *

Laurie’s fingers curled around the Russian death trap. She was angry – no, furious – and she thought about how easy it would be to disconnect herself and slam that box in her place on the end of his cable. Leave Kovacs fighting the monster programming inside it until his eyes burst, for all she cared. She wouldn’t really do it – she probably wouldn’t really do it – but right now only because Dreiberg would be pissed.

She and Kovacs had never gotten along personally, and she’d known that he considered her holo work to be a bare step up from prostitution, but she hadn’t suspected he despised her this much. So much that he’d dream of her – 

Old. But recognisably her. Worn down, pretty face cut by frown lines like unsutured knife wounds, but her. Both eyes blackened and tongue protruding as a thick-set middle aged man throttled her, grunting obscenities, his arousal tenting and dampening his thin silk boxers. Her hands fluttered as she blacked out, losing their grip on his meaty forearms.

Laurie vomited into the styrofoam box, gagging even as she reached for the plug in his neck – it would hurt like hell, just snapping the connection, and she was going to make damn sure he got the worse end of it – but froze when the image abruptly shattered into pixels as the disgusting man came in his pants, eyes bulging.

_No, no, no…_

It began again, the same hardened Laurie but another man, a younger one with a fine tailored suit that made the blood splattering it only an affront to good fabric. His eyes were hard and gleaming as he stabbed methodically, cutting shallow rents between every rib. Blood bubbled from the beaten Laurie’s lips as she murmured faint encouragement.

By the third iteration, Laurie’s stomach finally stopped heaving, having brought up everything short of her toenails, and she’d realised that the horror she felt wasn’t all her own. Not even most of it, if that was possible. Hers was mostly rage and cold planning, but the rest was pure helpless anguish. She wasn’t the one who wanted to rescue herself, Laurie realised. To her, there was no one to rescue, just a sick fantasy to punish.

The fourth was easier to stomach. Beaten-Laurie was the one handing out the punishment, this time, and it was more dominatrix than serial killer themed. And there was a theme, she realised, or a variety of them, and when she looked closely (at the edge of Old-Laurie’s pointy leather boot and the testicles being crushed under its toe, specifically), she recognised the too sharp border between them.

Even the best holos had that edge of two-dimensionality, the seams at their most engrossing and pleasurable points, and this was a very cheap holo. It shivered into static and re-formed as she watched.

There were a few swallows of sugar water left in one of Kovacs’s bottles, and Laurie drank straight from the bottle. The thought of uncountable hobo diseases lurking on his lips couldn’t turn a stomach that had shrivelled into a very unhappy walnut. She rinsed out her mouth, kicked the small door open and dumped the container outside, forced herself to look at the monstrous version of herself and _think_.

That wasn’t her, for one thing. It never had been. It had her dark hair and eyes (brown, and probably still chilling in long-term cold storage somewhere), and similar features, but it wasn’t Laurie’s own beauty – and she was aware of her beauty, not with vanity but the assured humiliation that comes from playfully breaking into the studio’s files and discovering her physical appearance was not merely a line item on their accounting sheets but several dedicated charts documenting each feature’s past, present, and projected state (and the future was not hopeful, warning that she would never achieve her mother’s unearthly splendour and, without severe intervention, be merely handsome by 40). The studio doctors had only tweaked her nose and lips to match her mothers’, leaving the exotic ruggedness of her then-unknown father’s jaw and cheekbones, and there were plenty of fans who’d gone under the knife to walk around in that face for a few months, until the next fad took hold.

No, whoever this woman was, like thousands of others, she’d gone for the genuine Sally Isham look.

Laurie didn’t know why, but she hated her.

Her movements hadn’t disturbed Kovacs’ rest in the slightest. He was practically comatose, barely twitching against the nightmares filling their shared awareness. Sleep had finally won him after a very long chase, and it wasn’t letting go easily.

The images probably looked like nothing but static to anyone who wasn’t poking around this exact server. They weren’t sharp conscious projections but loose images, degrading almost as quickly as they appeared. Still, it would be better to have nothing that might draw attention to their little corner.

And she couldn’t leave him trapped in such nasty nightmares. Even if he did annoy the snot out of her just by breathing.

She opened her eyes to check that he was, in fact, still breathing – yes, if shallowly – and settled down on the floor behind him.

The dominatrix released her victim and a new nightmare began. Laurie jumped, moving on instinct. Her mother had specialised in projection attacks – she could hear Sally smirking now, _It’s surprisingly effective, turning the tiger into a, heh, pussycat_ , but Laurie couldn’t be bothered with such delicate work when the monstrosity could just be shouldered aside. She interposed herself, projecting a giantess whose head was miles above the scene, and dragged their shared attention upward.

“Hey,” Laurie whispered into his ear. There was no outward reaction, but inside something scrabbled against her focus. The nightmare began to grow, too, and she caught an edge of panic: it was worse not to know, to wonder what would happen if your attention strayed for only a second. She thought of her mother’s lessons again and reluctantly attacked the weak point linking Kovacs to the murderous images.

She felt herself begin to sweat, the greasy liquid beading on her distant meat – and hell, she was starting to sound like her partners now, deluding herself that she was anything but that meat, a brain and the legs that moved it around – and tried not to watch the woman get killed again. This time it was two unjacked boys still young enough for handheld rigs, hurling insults. She reached for the vulnerable link in his chain of projection, grasped it, and twisted. The filthy tableau popped out of existence.

She wondered if it would help to get him offline, but leaving aside the matter of finding that switch (where would a madman hide his on/off button, anyway?), he’d probably respond to the sudden data silence the way someone normal would to having their eyes casually plucked out.

“Just a dream,” she said out loud, to herself as much as Kovacs. Those images had an appointment with her nightmares when she finally got her own shut-eye, and she started wondering exactly where Kovacs hid the good stims.

He responded with a flood of jagged half-sentences, most of them responding only to each other.

_You killed_ no, no, no…where, filthy whore? son? _dead, long dead_ just a dream? _get out_ the seagull must have stolen the bacon, birds don’t carry cash _You killed her?_ no, don’t touch _don’t_

Laurie winced and tapped the jack in his head, hard, producing a quick slash of static that momentarily deafened them both. She felt him jump – reacting strongly enough that there was the slightest twitch under her hand.

_don’t touch_ don’t leave _don’t_

“You’re giving me the mother of all headaches, K,” she groused gently, wondering why he retreated even further mid-sentence. “Whatever the hell that was, it’s gone. So…sleep. Quietly.”

_don’t_

“Shut up.”

She squirmed until she was flush against him, looping their cord and the hand attached over his hip. He clearly wanted to leap away, projected her clothed and probably none-too-fragrant flesh as a mixture of cloying honey and poisoned barbs and tried again to project his nightmare woman and her monsters, but she clamped down on it before they even had clear faces.

_Be still, goddamnit,_ she projected and tucked his metallic head under her chin. _I’m not going anywhere._

Grumbling images moved just below the focal horizon as he finally dropped into safer, more meaningless dreaming. Laurie briefly felt a stab of pity for whatever mother had had the Sisyphean chore of getting this kid to sleep every night, but shied away from the thought. Maybe it was the uneasy memories of Sally’s salacious bedtime stories, or the sense that she had all the corner pieces of the puzzle lined up and could finish it off easily if she’d turn over the box and get a look at the happy ending, but she retreated to patrolling the edges of their little territory with focused gusto.

Still nothing. Not a ripple, not a beep, not a simple hello or where the hell did you guys disappear to because you know a big mother hen like me would be checking in every other minute, right?

Laurie sighed. She needed a distraction from her distraction.

Kovacs wriggled closer to her warmth and began to snore.

_Fair enough_ , she thought, and carefully touched his hand. It was chilled and clammy, like fondling a prawncicle.

_I’m a concerned friend_ , she thought to cyberspace at large and pushed up the sleeve of his thermal shirt, greedily taking in forbidden sights while she checked his pulse at the elbow.

Wires trundled like huge veins just under the skin, surfacing at critical junctures or the odd access port. Thick scar tissue surrounded each, as if they’d been installed with supreme indifference for the flesh that supported the components. She traced the dots of light marking deeply buried work surging along nerves, illegal to install everywhere civilised, but easy enough to find in Chiba City – or Holowood. She’d never seen pirate work before and wanted to investigate further, see if it was similar to hers, branching gracefully out from the spine, or if it was as raw and uncomfortable as the rest of him. But she didn’t quite dare to expose any more skin. He was chilled enough already.

Laurie resolutely tugged the jackets back over him, but couldn’t help noticing his chest hadn’t moved in some time. She knew it was cyberspace time-creep, that it wasn’t healthy for her psyche to be watching the server’s calm grey space with one eye and the living body against hers with the other, but took the excuse to check again for a pulse anyway. Better to feel for the heart itself, as it wasn’t easy to find a vein among the wires in his arms.

He wore an insulated vest under his thick shirts, she discovered. Underneath that, she felt a mostly unaltered stretch of skin on his stomach, smooth but for a thick bumpy scar near the navel. It made her think of feeding tubes, though that was ridiculous – the man obviously had no trouble getting nutrients in the usual way. There were shockingly warm lines along his goosebumpled ribs – heat-sinks, she realised, dumping thermal waste back into the body the larger components leeched energy from.

Near the centre, his heart thunked reassuringly, refusing to buckle under the dual strain of man and machine.

Her own respiration sped up as she realised she could feel her own hand, warm as a brand and – was that tickling? She’d never been ticklish, even as a little kid and despite Uncle Hollis’s boisterous Tickle Monster greetings, and this just felt…weird. Irritating and itchy and overwhelming and also a little nice, as if she’d give anything for it to stop, then seek it again as soon as her nerves forgot the feeling.

She yanked her hand free, suddenly feeling like one of those creeps who pasted her head onto nude bodies and tried to sell the result as genuine porno. Her own chest felt crawly and sadly cold for a moment before Kovacs drifted deeper again, and she knew she’d do best to disengage and be miles away before he woke up.

Laurie suspected a person would only find out how he fit together via autopsy, and wondered how someone as nosily caring as Dreiberg could stand working with such a resolutely damaged machine.

She happened to be looking in the right direction when something like a malevolent sun rose on the near horizon. It even had rays, or maybe tentacles, reaching out and gobbling up neat binary blocks.

“K…” She shook him, but he only flopped bonelessly and showed her his teeth again. “K…wake up, what the fuck _is_ that?”

Laurie had nothing defensive, less than nothing, but marshalled the handful of offensive crypts she knew by heart, ones that would easily take out a low-level accounting drone after five or six tries. She tried to think herself fierce – _c’mon chica, it’s nothing but speed and raw guts out here, and you’ve got both in bucketfuls_ – but was tempted to cheer in sheer relief when Dreiberg and Veidt blipped into existence well between her and it.

_Boys, I promise, you get this one, and I will kick anyone’s ass you want on the outside. Deal?_

She made another effort to wake Kovacs, finally succeeding in raising a faint mumble when she pinched his stomach, then settled back to watch the fireworks.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

Two security techs hovered uncertainly behind Dreiberg, projecting the bland V-A logo. They flashed anxious binary strings – obviously very junior techs, lacking even vocalising software, and exactly the type to be too frantic with worry for their distantly beloved boss to follow his orders to disengage. This was _their_ unit, _their_ responsibility, _their_ world’s most famous philanthropist tycoon about to get squished like a blood-gorged mosquito in it, and Dreiberg had better not let that happen or else…

Dreiberg spared a millisecond of smug sympathy for the poor neutered bastards and kicked them out of harm’s immediate way. Veidt was already on the attack. The thing should have screamed in dumb pain or at least rage, but in the eerie silence the only sign of the two titans joining was decryption ripples cutting through the beast as it deflected them toward less essential programming. It began to expand back out of quarantine, perhaps finally sensing the trap.

“Oh no you don’t,” Dreiberg growled, slicing into one of the moving fault lines. He ripped the carapace open and peeked inside, sussing out what he could of the breathtakingly complicated structure, leaping back as it expanded to engulf him. It had nothing like human eyes, just a multifaceted surface that reflected fragments of him – a wasp’s ommatidia, thoughtlessly malicious. Nothing looked back at him from inside it.

He dodged the first attack, strategizing on the fly. He needed to drive it far enough in to snap it shut without risking any fraction’s escape. Some of these things were designed to be literal viruses, exploding into miniscule seeds that infected servers, transforming them into disease factories. No, this had to be clean.

He launched looping attacks that impacted on the thing’s nominal midsection, inside the quarantine, forcing it to inch back over the vulnerable spots like a caterpillar. (Veidt’s surprised curse told him he’d aimed well.) It was nearly clear of the threshold, as Dreiberg couldn’t help but wish that his partners were here to see him beat back this monster, when it switched back to offence. It attacked, faster than human thought, and just one lick of the spiked tentacle caught on and ripped away the layers of protections he’d spent years tinkering to perfection.

His nerves howled, insisting every hair on his body had been ripped out by the root at once. He dove backward, away from the second swipe that fell just short of him as Veidt launched a particularly vicious barrage on the other side.

_That didn’t actually hurt_ , he told himself. _Just your overactive imagination playing tricks._ His distant body believed differently, writhing in Veidt’s supremely comfortable office chair. It listened only to the other voice, the one chanting _damn damn damn, Adrian, I’m sorry…_

_But!_ a third voice chimed in, the analytical part of his brain that wouldn’t notice if the world around a fascinating puzzle turned to honeycombs and winged cows, let alone a little thing like imminent death. _Look!_

He looked, even though he had only a few moments of life remaining – and, to be fair, no other pressing plans – and saw the monster’s innards, reclassified. It was impossibly complex, yes, but most of the segments were just appropriated razzle-dazzle, intended solely to confound an ignorant tech. The only important nodes were here – here – here – and here and if Adrian knew where to focus his efforts, they had a chance to really take down this thing…

Hell, without a scrap of armor to hold him back, he’d only be faster.

Ridiculously, he imagined he heard Laurie calling his name. _Perfect,_ he thought, _why not, a beautiful lady to witness my heroic sacrifice and weep attractively over my grave. She looks so damn good in black, too…_

No time. Veidt was faltering, would be a smoking corpse back in the meat world any second now. Dreiberg threw himself into the morass of triumphantly whipping tentacles, diving and weaving, expecting with every millisecond to be caught and ripped in two. It spurred him on, determined to get as close as possible before it got him – he’d be the legendary cowboy after this, not Veidt – and suddenly found himself at the break he’d made in its carapace. Disbelieving his luck – his skill, his goddamn skill! – he activated and flung ID shards into the vulnerable nodes and closed his eyes, finished.

“Dreiberg, you idiot, get out of there!”

That _was_ Laurie’s voice – how – why – who cared – the offensive tentacles were inverting, converging on his noisy beacons, and finally – finally! – pulled itself entirely inside the unit. He slammed the entrance shut and triple-sealed every edge.

Laurie hovered behind the techies. She batted one out of the way and sprinted to Dreiberg’s side. “Oh, Dan – if you could only see what it’s done to you…”

“I have an idea,” he sighed.

She squinted. “Missed your ass entirely, though. Weird. What was that thing?”

He touched the side of the containment unit, looking for weaknesses. He found nothing obvious – classic V-A construction. But it was vanishingly rare to find something truly impermeable…

“Strike virus,” he told Laurie. “Nastiest I’ve ever encountered, and keyed to Veidt. You – ” he pointed to the techs, “is there a backdoor to this thing?”

They hesitated before blipping out nervous affirmatives.

“Typical,” Dreiberg snorted. “You two, watch this. Don’t – _don’t_ – try to open it. Laurie – what are you even doing here?”

She grinned sheepishly. “We came to rescue you.”

“We?”

She gestured toward the emptiness at her feet. “Well, I came, and since we’re bound together, Kovacs had to come, too…and, you know, there’s no way I can explain this quickly without it sounding like fetish porn, so what can I do to help?”

Dreiberg willed away that mental image – carefully filing it away for later, he admitted to himself – and told her, “Watch these yahoos. They’ll try to rip open the damn thing as soon as my back is turned. Don’t let them. Kick them, or something.”

Laurie’s projection was suddenly less pretty and much more muscular. She grinned and superfluously cracked pixelated knuckles. “Oh, gentlemen…”

The front secured, Dreiberg made his way to the backdoor no secure system should have and nearly all did. There wasn’t a programmer breathing that didn’t have a little cowboy in him. A nanosecond’s hack revealed that the access code was “Password.” He upgraded it to a 3648-character string and protected that with Level 16 encryption. It was the principle of the thing, and it killed almost half of the tense 15 seconds it took Veidt to finish off the beast.

The containment unit beeped – _contamination exterminated!_ Dreiberg popped open the roughly hacked hatch.

Veidt eased himself out, projection a little fuzzy around the edges but otherwise visibly no worse for wear. “This should not be here! What bright boy put a backdoor on a _quarantine unit_?”

Dreiberg grinned, relieved to see the other man in one piece. “Fine, jump back in. I’ll seal this up and you can try your luck with the proper exit. I only had time to throw on three firewalls, and past those are two extremely hair-triggered security techs dying to be the ones who ice Veidt’s assassin-bot.”

Veidt winced theatrically. “I think I’ve had enough exercise for one morning. Dreiberg – Daniel, I need you to do something for me.”

“Saving your sorry hide wasn’t enough?” Dreiberg joshed, but his yay-we’re-alive giddiness dissolved as fine lines appeared on Veidt’s perfect image.

“This may be far more important. Daniel, please. I need someone I can trust.” He thrust a smaller version of the containment unit in his hands. “Take this. Analyse it for me. It’s what’s left of that thing – as soon as I cracked it, it self-terminated. I could barely move quickly enough to retain this much.”

The tiny box felt heavier than an anvil. As heavy as an anvil could be, in weightless pixels. “You’ve got an army of techs, the best in the world – ”

Veidt cut him off with a curt gesture, pulling himself upright. “No, Daniel – we both know that would be you. When you’re willing to exert yourself to your full potential, at least. And – ”

Dreiberg’s automatic argument dried on his lips at the raw fear that drifted across Veidt’s expression. “And this thing came from inside my organisation. The Pyramid Transport documentation codes – I saw just a flash, before it dissolved, but it was there. It originated from at least one of my own people.”

“You own Pyramid? Hell, they deliver my mail. And my take-out. And that time I needed a test subject for – ”

“Obviously, I can’t leave this to my own security force – may as well stab myself in the throat. Then, at least, I could add ‘streamlined assassination process’ to my quarterly self-assessment.”

The world’s richest man smiled mirthlessly at his friend, who could only nod his agreement. “I’ll take a look at it. Wait, you actually have to assess yourself every three months? You can’t get out of that, as the man in charge of the known universe?”

“For the stockholders. No one escapes death, taxes, or quarterly self-assessments.”

“Except me. Hell, I’m two for three today, so far, and since I’ve got no income to speak of…”

“You’re a bastard, Dreiberg.”

“I’ll have Kovacs administer an assessment to me later, if it makes you feel better. He’s a demon for standardised testing.”

He left Veidt snickering as he marshalled his troops and began directing them to scope out the massive damage wrecked on his company in the last two minutes. He found Laurie metaphorically kicking the hell out of one of the techs.

“Oh, more lipstick? And higher heels? Sure, I can arrange that!”

Dreiberg refused to laugh at the poor idiot, his neat uniform V-A transformed into a rough humanoid, an alphabetic trannie prostitute. He couldn’t help noticing that the design looked more than a little like Sally Isham’s famous white-hat costume.

“Laurie, er, are you sure it wasn’t female to begin with?”

She shook her head, and the logo acquired even longer cascading tresses. “No, she is,” she said, pointing to the other tech drone, which seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. “This one…no, not from what he was flashing, Mr-Thinks-Binary-Is-His-Own-Secret-Code. Have fun unpicking the upgrades, asshole!”

She took Dreiberg’s hand and dragged them back to the disused server he and Kovacs often used as a message drop.

“How did you know about this place?” he asked.

She grinned. “Oh, I know about all of your little no-girls-allowed clubhouses. Hell, I even know where Kovacs really lives. I’m here right now, and it’s far more terrifying than you could possibly imagine.”

She was in no hurry to change her muscle-bound projection, he noticed, watching her happily stretch and flex. “Veidt’s safe?” she asked.

“For now,” he nodded.

“What’s he know about Blake?”

“Funny, I’ve been too distracted with one petty thing and another to ask him,” he snapped back, then sighed. “Sorry. I’ll ask him in a minute. But it’s not looking good – the two attacks may be entirely unrelated, although Hollis thinks this was connected to Blake somehow. There’s no reason to suspect anyone’s gunning for white hats, after only two incidents, both individuals with many enemies – ”

“Kovacs and I were targeted by at least four goons outside the Mystic’s. That’s why we had to go underground. Well, metaphorically underground. Related to that, we have a standing invitation to stay in the Luddite Heights with the tribals, should you feel like an exciting day trip any time soon.”

“You two were busy,” he observed. He didn’t exactly like the thought of his partners getting along. What was she doing at Kovacs’ place, anyway?

“We’re hiding,” she continued. “It might not be safe to go home for a while. But – we might need to, soon. Or I might, at least. Where, uh, you know that K still keeps stims hidden in your place?”

Dreiberg sighed. “Third floorboard from the right in the guest room, in the ginger pot in the kitchen, and duct-taped under the back stairs. There’s probably a few more I haven’t stumbled across.”

“You know? He said you flushed them.”

“I used to. But he’d just keep pushing himself, the stubborn bastard, drag along on pixie sticks and adrenaline, instead of giving in and taking a nap or two like a normal human being. He’d get careless, dangerously so, and…grumpy. He’d go out to buy more stims like that, just begging to be rolled for his components and left for dead in some filthy alley. So now…I just pretend I don’t know where they are, since I still certainly don’t approve. It’s best that way.”

“Oh, god,” Laurie laughed. “You two are so cute. So goddamn precious, it hurts. I could dress up in a schoolgirl uniform and bunny slippers and hop around singing about my love for Pikachu, and you two would still take the kawaii blue ribbon.”

Dreiberg paused for several seconds to absorb that image. “…thank you?”

“I’ll have to go back for them, unless you’ve got cash to buy more?”

He shook his head. “You’ve got it all. Why are you so concerned about feeding Kovacs’ drug habit?”

“Let’s just say I fully support him dodging dreamland for the rest of his life. Perpetually conscious Kovacs is a very good thing. He’s out cold now and, Dan – ” she flexed her fingers, projecting a cigarette into them and toying with it, “do you know anything about him? From before you partnered up?”

“Just that he grew up in the Charlton Maximum Security Orphanarium…so…I’d assume he was an orphan?” Dreiberg shifted uncomfortably. There was a little more, in his medical records, but Laurie could run that hack herself if she really wanted to know. He’d kept a close eye on Kovacs and never seen any lingering effects, so there was no reason to worry Laurie with the possibility he might end up the way those other poor orphans had.

“Hmm…” she projected thoughtfully. “Does he, did he have dark hair like mine under all that metal, by any chance?”

“I have no idea,” Dreiberg replied, baffled. “Look, I have to catch up to Vedit – ”

“And K isn’t going to return to the land of the living any time soon. If you promise to not run open-armed into any death traps and stay under Veidt’s sheltering wing in the meantime – ”

“Hey!”

“ – we can meet up in the diner and compare notes after sunset.”

“Daniel?” Just a whisper of projection, seeming to come from behind Laurie’s shoulder.

“He’s fine, K, see? Safe under a billion layers of V-A security. Don’t try to wake up.” She made an odd gesture, like stroking an invisible waist-high cat, and it left Dreiberg’s chest tight with uncertain resentment.

“I have to go,” he projected abruptly. “See you in 12 hours.”

Back in the real world, men in crisp catering whites placidly arranged a small feast on the broad desk. The smell of warm spices hit Dreiberg’s empty stomach like a freighter. It seemed mad that any V-A employee could be so calm, only two minutes into the most devastating corporate blitzkrieg in a generation.

Veidt absently crumbled a poppadom, staring into his wall of monitors as he took in the data from his headset. A cascade of “…and this just in”s bubbled from the mouths of uniformly stunning newsreaders as they abandoned the pre-set news cycle of celebrity press releases for an actual event. Dreiberg left him to absorb the simultaneous reports, helping himself to the korma frittata. Even Veidt’s world falling down around their ears couldn’t distract him from the luxury of real eggs and meat, and he ate until his belt buckle threatened to pop. Kovacs would be in heaven, he thought wistfully.

Veidt picked at the crumbs of his poppadom. “It could been have worse,” he judged, finally, muting the volume as the newscasters moved on gratefully to an update on Jon Osterman’s recovery from “exhaustion.” (Currently: still tired.) His eyes flicked from side to side as he scanned incoming damage control reports. “It could have been much worse.”

“Yes, I could be having breakfast with a cinder across the table,” Dreiberg snarked, expecting the impatient look Veidt shot him. “It would have put me right off my feed.”

“I can likely replenish the charity funds that thing destroyed from the marketing budget, but the stockholders are going to scream bloody murder,” Veidt told him, ice rimming the words. “Unless you believe the benevolent czars of industry will step up to rescue the victims of their environmental tampering themselves?”

“What’s the real story with Blake?” Dreiberg asked quietly, refusing to be drawn into their usual debate.

“I suppose I should feign surprise you’re aware of his death? No?” Veidt sighed. “The official word, to those few with the security clearance to be notified, is suicide. The official rumor we’ve leaked is that he was the victim of a simple burglary gone wrong, far more embarrassing for a man of his reputation. The truth?” He shrugged. “We’re investigating, but…he had many enemies, Dreiberg.”

“As many as you?”

Veidt raised a perfect eyebrow. It wasn’t plucked into a neat arch; it simply had the good taste to grow that way. “Is this an interrogation?”

“A very polite one.”

A reluctant smile quirked his lips. “You always manage to make me laugh. Visit more often. But, no, Blake and I didn’t get on, as you well know. I never approved of his methods, pioneer or not. But…he did much good, usually inadvertently. In any case, I hope you know I’d never harm a former comrade in arms, no matter what the provocation.”

“Provocation like – ”

Veidt’s lips thinned. “That was a misunderstanding. We mended fences soon after.”

“A misunderstanding? You were under the myelin reconstructor for days!”

“Little more than a bloody nose from a playground scuffle. He mistook me for a black hat and reacted instinctively, no more, no less, and very long ago.”

Veidt sipped his chai and looked right through him. Sterner men than Dreiberg would have changed the subject.

“Two attacks on us in two days…” He didn’t know why he left out the attempted attack on his partners. Possibly because he had no more information than that they’d been chased and escaped without discovering who’d pursued them, or why.

“Correlation is not causation, Dreiberg. My security forces are already on the matter of Blake’s death; kindly focus your energies on my beast.”

Dreiberg bit his tongue. If he let the words on it escape, Veidt would calmly apologise and pester him with how he felt the available brainpower would be best used until Dreiberg felt the only escape was to jam his underwear over his head and leap out the window.

“There’s a cot in my private study,” Veidt offered with the same despotic kindness. Dreiberg fell asleep with his shoes on, resentment smothered in the softness of genuine goosedown.

He woke violently, throwing himself out of nightmares, the horizon eaten by a ball of flame and ripping his head off to see the same vicious tentacles ripping their way through the Sprawl. Veidt had been by his side, not the cool corporate magnate but the fiery idealist he’d been a decade before. Ivory teeth shone red with reflected fire, exposed in the devilish grin Dreiberg hadn’t seen since the man stepped forward, revealing that the brilliant hacker ironically calling himself “Veidt” was in fact the new titular leader of everything that mattered.

He was the first truly public face of a very secretive dynasty, tripling profits in the first year by sheer good looks (or so the legend was passed down from accountant to clerk each hiring cycle). His parents, siblings, and ill-defined lesser relatives waited in suspended animation for their turn to reclaim chairmanship, the schedule of which was one of many subjects a lesser mortal dared not broach. Even Kovacs had been unable to dig up anything but a series of bloodless maintenance memos between the sleepers’ notoriously bellicose lawyers.

Dreiberg took a quick shower before searching for his host, using every product he found there; he emerged over-moisturised and smelling like an extremely tasteful cathouse. He found Veidt still at his desk, a pale shadow of stubble marring his jawline.

Veidt shook his head as Dreiberg approached, a quick side-to-side jerk. “I’ll walk you out,” he commanded, tucking his rig into an inside jacket pocket. “By the way, could you pass on to Miss Isham both my admiration for her…creative…attack and a polite request she not do so again? I’d rather my techs were currently focused on their work at this time, not de-splicing Manolos from their projections.”

Dreiberg shrugged. “She said he was rude to her.”

“According to the recording, he only offered a somewhat risqué compliment about the honor of meeting Sally Isham’s daughter.”

Dreiberg tried to catch his eye, to pick up whatever flickering message the other man couldn’t get across verbally, but Veidt stayed a half-step ahead of him. Employees stared in wonder as he stepped through the common areas of his building. Several snapped furtive pictures as they passed. Dreiberg tried to keep his face turned aside, but they came from too many angles. Kovacs was going to be pissed when those popped up on dozens of cyberlogs in the next few minutes, making Dreiberg an accidental celebrity for a few hours. Kovacs avoided Veidt himself for exactly that reason. Among many others, including the restraining order.

Veidt smiled benignly into the middle distance, seeming to pinpoint each employee with a single nod. The pair moved in a buzz of whispers, an irritating smother of white noise.

“I woke up remembering,” Dreiberg broke it with a defiant murmur. “The old days, you know? Before you were a living god.”

Veidt snorted quietly, his expression tightening slightly.

“You always had such big plans, so frustrated you couldn’t cut the world into orderly pieces and put them back together the way you thought was right. Now you could, and you only seem…content.”

He was being more than discourteous, challenging Veidt under the heavy hush of so many ears, but Dreiberg only felt grubby satisfaction when the other man drew closer and replied under his breath. He was spending too much time with Kovacs, for this to feel like a victory.

“The silly fantasies of an impotent youth – I’ve learned that real power takes a steady hand, if one would not be wielded by it instead.”

“Level is the head that wears the crown, hmm?”

Veidt stopped and gestured at the silenced monitors lining the walls. “Look at the world, Daniel,” he said, his voice now ringing out and silencing rows of worshipful employees.

_Oh God, a speech,_ Dreiberg thought. _I shouldn’t have roused the sleeping dragon…_

“You bury yourself in the minutia of data, fighting from spreadsheet to server, while the 11 billion living, breathing human beings on this plant are one blue screen of death away from the abyss. Only madmen could truly want to live that way. Most of the world’s population lives in conditions that would make a Dark Age peasant blanch while we frolic in our pristine virtual Eden.”

Dreiberg moved to head him off. “You’ve been talking to Byron again, haven’t you?”

Veidt stiffened and moved past him, stepping into the relative privacy of a glass-walled elevator. “There are worse influences. He’s one of the very few to fully recover from 5-SB addiction without developing the characteristic obsessions, and that alone attests to a strength of character one would do well to emulate.”

“Kovacs recovered, and he was a child. An unwitting test subject, not a dabbler in every substance du jour.”

“You seriously consider that a recovery?” Veidt’s expression was pleasant, as if they spoke of particularly nice weather. “The man is a sociopath, more robot than person. You’d be safer working with Hal 9000.”

Productivity halted as they travelled down countless stories, entire teams pausing to gawp at the embodiment of Veidt-Ashpool might, making time with a nonentity.

“You were happy to work with us when you didn’t have an army of professionals to do the heavy lifting,” Dreiberg hissed. “Hell, the Gatesware crack that went south – you’d have rotted in quarantine if Kovacs hasn’t been crazy enough to peel in after you and break you both out.”

The elevator doors opened on the ground level. Dreiberg wondered how long it had been since Veidt’s feet were this close to the street. He smiled professionally and offered Dreiberg his hand. He took it automatically, surprised to feel calluses on the otherwise manicured fingertips. A different sort of vanity, he supposed. Trophy scars.

“I hope,” Veidt began.

Dreiberg dropped his hand and started toward the first security checkpoint where, personal friend or not, he’d go through one of several invasive anti-espionage inspections that would eat up the rest of the day. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

A soft “And so we part,” drifted after him, but Veidt was already shuttling up and out of sight when Dreiberg looked back.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

_10 October, 18:06  
Woke with bleeding dreams, staining neat spread of data into sticky disarray. Uncomfortable sense of conversation, interrupted words wilting on lips, but Miss Isham waits outside, smoking and watching student work on digital notebooks in concrete courtyard below. Door left open, propped with her foot, incomprehensible breach of security. Skin shimmies, fine hairs simultaneously forced against their lay._

“Before you say anything, I needed some fresh air. And so does that hobbit hole.”

_Disconnected. She smokes with now-free hand. Am free as well, cable dangling emptily down from neck. First thought was to remove the now-useless appendage, but have tucked it down sleeve, hookup hanging inside palm. Better to allow for possibility of reconnecting quickly, a much easier process now that firewalls have been adjusted for her presence. Disagreeable sensation, but is foolish to refuse proven tactical advantage for personal comfort._

“Fresh air is irrelevant. Security is priority concern.”

_Have slept an inconceivable 11 hours. Data trawls heave with catch, most of it already rotted with time’s passage. Sorting through will be unpleasant process. Much of it dominated by news of Veidt-Ashpool strike, Veidt’s PR militia spinning like vaudevillians dashing from precarious plate to plate; no, more like magicians, like the Mystic’s flourishing hand distracting the gullible while another palms evidence of massive destruction. Use many words to carefully say nothing, certainly not that empire would lie in shambles today without the intervention of anonymous white hat._

_Head fuzzy. Intestines fighting digestion. Cannot believe voluntary unconsciousness is so-called natural process, despite Dreiberg’s repeated reassurances, not when mankind has always utilised nature’s bounty for the necessary stimulants to hold sleep at bay. Daniel is soft in many ways. Requires constant distraction from empty luxuries available to a man of relative wealth, but will is strong underneath._

_Spam first, opportunities to purchase ephemeral goods, launder fortunes of deposed Eurasian oligarchs, enhance manhood. Effluence of diseased minds. All of cyberspace to fill and no dreams left larger than a man’s wallet and genitals. Discard, feeling soiled even after clearing virtual recycling bin._

_She will insult personal hygiene. Nothing if not predictable._

“It’s good to breathe actual air instead of stink.” 

_Gives expected reply, but wry glare is at cigarette._

“Every molecule in there had already been through my lungs a hundred times. They were bored with the scenery.”

_Insults domicile instead. Still predictable. Face twists, child forcing down distasteful nutrition._

“You were right, you know. The smoke leaves my new shades all greasy. I’ll really have to quit this time, just as soon as these are finished. Can’t return them in this state.”

_Touches carton, bent from scramble to heavens and back. Waits for response to unexpected admission. Unlikely to be genuine. Must be sarcasm. Shrug is best deflection, let corrosive attitude roll off shoulders, without satisfying need for argument or fawning gratitude at slightest positive attention. She is only tolerated for Daniel’s sake._

_Daniel – he has made some news outlets this afternoon, minor financial rags positing potential VA-Dreiberg Industries alliance, despite family company’s total destruction years before. Stupid, stupid carelessness! Image after image, with Veidt, bland expressions, his face never fully captured but easily composited together. Stock image of senior Dreiberg, before death. Much like Daniel, except lighter hair, grim mouth. Must keep Daniel’s face and work out of sight until financial speculation passes. Unexpected wrench in strategic gears. Once again is obvious, cannot let the man out of sight._

“You still owe me a new microcloth. This one’s a biohazard now, thanks to your brain melting out your nose.”

_Words are combative, expected. Wobbly, forced smile is not. Her face scrunches, worried. Run diagnostic._ “Neural net appears intact.”

_Facial muscles smooth. Smile becomes professional. Flashed like default setting in place of emotional projection through twelve years of holos. Can cross-reference 316 instances showing exactly eight teeth and curved higher on the left than right, like this one._

“That means the jelly it sits on is fine, too? Good. Look, if you can walk – we’ve got to meet Dreiberg soon. If you can’t, well, I could probably pay most cabbies in sat-on cigarettes and not send up a signal flare to anyone watching for my charge card.”

_Must reluctantly admit she is intelligent, despite appearance. Has learned quickly, away from the corrupting taint of her mother, the pimp of tawdry consumerist pap to starving generations, dying for real meaning. Are dozens of unaccessed messages from Sally Isham in her daughter’s private inbox; she wisely ignores them, just as wisely retains as possible evidence in future transgression. Has accessed little from previous debauched life, only exercise programs. Now shuns celebrity gossip, where she once obsessively trawled for own name, seeks instead tech and political intel. Even music playlists, ordered to accompany spins and kicks, are new and mostly what Daniel favors. Is shedding her skin of luxury for one of grime, and that at least is laudable._

“Can walk.” _Even though knees are gelatinous. Components’ performance suboptimal as body elements slowly come back online. Am hungry. Stomach growls._

_Very hungry._

_Fingers tremble punching in lock code. Will need to return once for belongings soon, what hasn’t already been stuffed into pockets with Mystic’s Russian death trap. Have set up new data trawl, seeking blank spots in Sprawl’s awareness of itself. Perhaps Bronx. Something with plumbing.  
/post_

_10 October, 18:38  
Arm slides under mine as Thrift Hotel courtyard eases back into focus through grey nothingness._

“C’mon, K, stay with me. Shit, I can’t even tell if you’ve got eyes, let alone if they’re open.”

“They’re fine.” _Embarrassing weak mumble. Stomach growls again, plastering itself to ribs. Can’t seem to escape strong fingers, blunt nails digging into rib cage. Strange sense of déjà vu._ “Hungry.”

_First taxi to stop is in dangerous condition, rear stabilisers shot, battery port sparking, but driver happy to charge several packets of German cigarettes for trip. Offers knock-off holos, Korean-made mp3 chip, and like-new 10mm submachine gun in quick succession for remainder of carton, but Miss Isham (briefly hesitating over last option) refuses all. Run driver’s name and serial number through criminal databases, but is a good alias, returning nothing. Too much to hope he is one of us, fighting the good fight against the omnicorporations engulfing small lives with the casual entitlement of long-extinct baleen whales. More likely another petty criminal, dealing in toxic indulgences as much as underground necessities, anything falling into hands that might turn a profit. Will remember his face._

_Watch streets pass, visor clinking on window plastic but no energy to move away. Listlessly sort through remaining catch in data trawls, waiting for nodes of meaning to emerge. Brain still sodden, impulses trying to pass through uncarded wool soaked in syrup._

_Feel eyes on me, behind impermeable lenses. Touches, again, this time reaching for bare skin underneath the neckjack. Gets a static shock when she brushes metal, but does not take warning. Curls around neck – perhaps seeking pulse, hoping for positive report to Daniel on nursing skills? Superfluous effort, not meriting praise; am perfectly capable of monitoring own vitals while conscious. While unconscious…_

_Recall witnessing battle, somewhat. Inability to shake off lethargy long enough to have Daniel’s back, then confirming he’d triumphed. Nothing else clear, only the fog of dreams._

_Hand still there. Move closer to window; arm stretches and follows. Feels huge, contacting far more skin than relatively small fingers should… Huge. Giantess. Battling…_

_Pedantic Freudian themes. Can she feel skin temperature rising? Will misinterpret. Could explain strange attitude, smugness tucked under the surface…no. Only borrowed hardware. Not brain. Espionage and anti-espionage departments of corporations, including Daniel’s so-altruistic friend Veidt’s, have attempted to breach inner voice for decades without success. Inside of one’s skull is last secure sanctuary of mankind._

_Door only opens from driver’s remote. Wiring secured not by lock but calcified generations of duct tape. No escape there. Minute vibrations run through raw metal at base of skull, fingerprints catching on whorls of small flaws in surface. Searching for an off switch?_

_Must touch the hand to remove it. Distasteful, contact between porous membranes, more permeable than a start-up’s firewall, that skin of a thousand ugly fantasies. Have compiled gigabytes of Miss Isham-inspired depravity, cataloguing sources for eventual extermination. Would seek Daniel’s help if he didn’t show hints of similar proclivities, though not accessing material himself. Exposure to filth, even in destroying it, might trigger contamination._

_Only protecting him. And her, in the process. Best they don’t know what from, and how much. Fortunately only drop in metaphorical bucket compared to the tsunami of filth her mother’s whorish shenanigans inspire. Suspect the senior Miss Isham lurks, anonymously encouraging sick individuals._

_Her daughter would at least be properly sickened by, for instance, newest posting in busiest fan-server: head spliced into multi-participant obscenity, limbs undulating like the tentacles of Veidt’s strike assassin. From expressions and rhythmic movement, posit head is taken from holo G26-003,_ Horseback Riding in Rural Vermont _. Good work, minimal seams, possibly fabricated by enemies in professional circles. Warrants closer inspection. Later. Miss Isham need not be aware of filth until culprits have been punished, so that justice may temper shame._

_Currently ignoring all attempts to disengage hand. Fingers forcibly removed from perch now curl in collar and pull. Must go with motion or risk losing shirt. Tugged until cheek mashes into her shoulder. Shifts grip to upper arm, allowing no escape. Pats shoulder once, twice. Stares out opposite window, mouth a grim line, unwilling to witness own bizarre assault. Smells like the heights, smoke, bile and ancient industrial carbon liming sweat, not the sweetness of uncountable holo impressions._

_Driver is watching, eyes flickering from street to cctv monitor. Surreptitiously presses “record” button._

_Pats shoulder again. Signal? Should be connecting cable to her wrist where driver can’t see, receive message that can’t be spoken aloud? Hand is trapped between us, with it the cable. Only barrier between torsos._

_News cycle moves on, trawls suddenly blaring that the V-A strike origin has been found, a lone gunmen dead by his own hand in a Chechnyan apartment block._

_Gunga Diner in sight. Driver, disappointed, punches the “record” button off. No market for this small depravity, it seems._

“If you’re looking to offload the rest of those dangerous and very illegal cancer sticks, you could do worse than my girl Josephine.”

“Cash?” _Miss Isham, finally releasing me. Skin crawls, trying to return to original position around body. Driver jerks chin at cab idling ahead._

“Never deal with cash, chica. Gets simple people like us in one bad ass of trouble, no matter who’s kid we are.” _Flashes pearlescently new teeth._

_No cash, as promised, and no stims, but Josephine trades a blank credit chip for the rest of the carton and one famous smile.  
/post_

 

“Coffee.”

“You want the 500 mil or the large?”

“Two large.”

_October 10, 19:14  
Order half the menu. Miss Isham, the other half. Grotesquely overdeveloped muscle mass must burn calories as quickly as neural tech. Shows no further signs of accosting, but scrunch into far corner of booth anyway, out of reach. Diner’s signal is strong, one less function to generate from own shrinking reserves. She makes interlocking coffee rings with the bottom of her cup, frowning._

_Search for more on Blake or the make of his final gift reveals little – suspect it may be custom piece, untraceable. Gossip threads that provided original intel have moved on to V-A speculation; no help there. Fickle ghosts, slavering after the moment’s flavour, despite deeper value of yesterday’s mystery. Older caches offer fragments, rehashing half-heard scandals. Node may be forming there, but can’t be forced. Will be able to bring more search engines online when caffeine hits._

_Miss Isham sighs, sets cup aside. Brace for impact._

“K…this morning, I don’t know what that was – ”

“Strike virus. Defeated now. Should pay more attention to obvious.”

“No, uh…before that.”

_Before that? Sleeping. Should recognise what she herself indulges in nightly. Reach for coffee to cover uncomfortable confusion. Grabs my wrist, slopping hot liquid on us both. Doesn’t seem to notice scalding, lowering voice._

“The dreams, K. The ones out of Satan’s bedside holo stash. With the woman who looked like me.”

_Blood retreats from extremities. Pools in torso, packing in so tight heart has no room to beat. Hand forcing wrist to formica surface suddenly very warm._

“They looked like holos, anyway, but real, too, and maybe you just have extremely fucked up dreams…”

_Must have – what must she – she’ll tell – she knows –_

“…but I doubt that. I don’t need, or, God, want to know what that was all about, but the woman – what happened to her?”

_Has gotten into mind somehow – should never have trusted – couldn’t have, though, brain can be destroyed from cyberspace attack, not rummaged through and left intact – must have been forced to confess while incapacitated – for what purpose? Blackmail unlikely – already receives benefits of skills as part of team, already has unfettered access to Daniel. Senseless violation._

_…kept quiet in curtained-off corner, fingers jammed in ears, but images still bled through._ She _was shielded, senseless meat puppet completely absent through fantasy atrocities, weekender nightmares of family men and upstanding conglomo-citizens. Except they did seep through, eventually. Shoddy custom rig, all safeties stripped away, lucky she was not lobotomised with first use. No, not lucky. Retreated into poorer analgesics: rage, KT, and pirated holos. Paid far more than in the legal cribs, but only in cash, useless in the law-abiding world. Could only purchase more sickness, from sickened underbelly of Sprawl._

_Furtive nature of criminal activity kept most of that life silent, off the record. Scoured away all remaining hints in first cyberspace ventures. Names, faces, people – obliterated. More restful grave than deserved. Left Charlton records intact, sop for those like Daniel expecting tragic history appropriate for selling soap._

_Hand has tightened painfully, grinding wrist bones together. Will not break under interrogation. Baffling, pointless interrogation. What does senseless woman want?_

_Stomach growls, loudly. She jerks, lips twisting like the bad taste is back on tongue, loosens grip. Still avoiding direct glance, watching passers-by through round window as if desperate for interruption._

_Alternative – knowledge could be unwitting. Unwanted. Deranged unconscious mind, forcibly confessing all. Theoretically possible. Have not slept since hardwired for permanent cyberspace access._

_Throat is tight, croaking._

“Dead.”

_She pulls away, releasing hand. Food arrives, smell hitting stomach and rooting me in place more effectively than restraint._

“Good.” _Snatches samosa before the plate is settled, growling as hot grease sizzles chin._

“Customer wanted more than fantasy.” _Dip nan bread in vindaloo sauce, but can’t bring it to mouth. Tear steaming dough into strips instead._ “Tried to exact justice for worthless whore. Failed.”

_Confession supposed to be good for soul. Immortal essence must not reside in throat, tight with bile and panic. Only loosens long heartbeats later when commanded._

“Eat, for fuck’s sake. Before you pass out, and I have to explain to Dreiberg how I let our partner drown in industrial-grade korma gravy.”

_Have to, if am to get any sustenance at all. Woman eats like Veidt’s strike virus. All tasteless now, but fills aching void in stomach._

_Blip in message drop – Daniel in taxi now. Out of V-A’s range, uploads data, the fraction of virus he’d deemed safe to take away. Quickly make copies and cache in various hiding places, information secured before beginning analysis. Should notify Miss Isham, but is staring moodily at remains of dinner. Conversation impossible._

“This is none of my business – less than none of my business – and I think it’s best we stim you up to the eyeballs asap and pretend we shared a nice normal zombie apocalypse dream. Deal?”

“…yes.”

“But before we retreat into that beautiful lie together, I feel like…look, you should just know…that’s not what it’s like. Fucking, I mean. It’s – oh, for God’s – get your hands off your ears!”

_Growing inured to crudity. Unaffected by casual obscenity. Perhaps infected already. Very, very bad._

“I’m just trying to tell you, normal people wouldn’t do that, would never want to do that.”

_Naiveté, for one depicted as sexual plaything every post-pubescent moment. Customers_ were _normal, just more so. Ordinary men tainting wholesome lives with animal filth always lurking inside. Basest desires only kept in check by unavailability of satisfaction. Miss Isham in supreme danger if believes otherwise._ “And normal men want…?”

_Opens mouth. Squeaks. Closes mouth. Thoughtful. Drags finger through smidgen of curry left on plate and licks it._

“Actually…damned if I know. Until Jon, I’d never had sex that wasn’t some poor wannabe’s audition. And Jon, well, I told you all about that. He’s as far from normal as you can get, in a different way of course.”

_Wish brain truly was hard drive, so all conversations could be deleted, entire system reformatted, preventing memory’s return. Someday._

“Hey, here’s a thought – we’ll ask Dan. He’d know. Hell, he’s the most normal guy on the planet!”

_Ridiculous. Could tell her myself – Daniel is a good man, not free of desires but admirably restrained. Not normal; far better than merely normal. Will not tell her, though. Node between them distressingly obvious, robust and cancerous. Probably present from first meeting decades before, introduced by mentors like breeding pair, only growing with shared outcast state. Interests aligning, even when separated – particularly when separated. Increasingly speak in private shorthand. Daniel insists, must make her feel welcome, comfortable, give over space that was mine. Both will reject disharmonious element in time, form stable partnership free from stain._

_Can only claw into budding intimacy while still tolerated. Galling._

“Agreed. Going to eat bhajis?”

_Different, rarer smile while shoving over plate; only twelve instances in entire holo catalogue, always at close of difficult scene.  
/post_

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

Dreiberg paused across the street from the Gunga Diner, watching the two most important people in his life fight over the last samosa. It wasn’t often he had the chance to just look at either of them. Kovacs got fidgety after three seconds of Dreiberg making eye contact with his reflection. Laurie just hated to be still. If she had already worn herself out exercising and didn’t have a project to work on, she’d rather clean the cluttered and dusty basement where they worked than put her feet up. That always ended with Kovacs throwing a tantrum that she’d ruined his organisation and stomping off to wherever he stayed when Dreiberg’s basement got too comfortable for his liking.

Actually, that was probably why she cleaned their den in the first place, to get a break from their permanently irascible partner. She was always happy enough to relax with a cup of coffee when she was alone with Dreiberg, safe to talk about her life without the other’s harsh criticism.

For instance, Kovacs was probably lecturing her right now on the wasteful frivolity of the fashionable sunglasses she was wearing indoors, at night.

Which did not explain why she laughed, soundless through the glass, and let him have the last deep-fried chunk of gristle the Gunga passed off as a side dish.

They weren’t sunglasses, Dreiberg realised, when two heads turned and gave him three reflections. Those things were sunk right into her skin, probably into the bones of her skull.

“Oh,” he said, sitting down next to Kovacs and staring at the table until the nausea passed. “Those are, uh, new.”

“Yep! Barely itch at all, now. They can go to infrared or – hey, fingerprints!” She smacked his hand away with an irritated grunt. “Why do they always want to touch?”

Kovacs slumped in the booth, tugging his hat further over his visor. Probably a nervous twitch – the good thing about the Gunga was that everyone eating was a twitchy gearhead or razorgirl, so neither of his partners warranted a second glance. “Shiny,” he grumbled. “Attracts magpies.”

Laurie leaned over and sniffed. “You smell fruity. Like fruit, I mean. Did Veidt have real fruit?”

Dreiberg decided not to point out that it was shower gel, or perhaps moisturiser, or even the aftershave. Kovacs would just give him that _look_. “Nope, no fruit. Real eggs, though, and chicken. Man…actual chicken, that once clucked, and made eggs, and, uh...chickens were the ones that went 'cluck,' right, not 'hoot'?”

He looked at the remnants of their meal sadly. Pressed krill chemically addled to taste vaguely meat-like, petroleum byproducts stabilising the synthetically spiced sauce…it was never easy to go back to normal food after visiting Veidt.

Kovacs sat up and shoved the plate aside. “Stupid,” he muttered. “Obvious, really. Should have seen from the beginning.”

“You’d better be talking about yourself, K.”

Kovacs peeked around the diner before producing the Russian death trap for Dreiberg’s inspection. “Found this at the Mystic’s. Left by Blake – recording and raw data, but fatally booby-trapped. Only meant to be accessed by one who could disarm.”

“It lowered K’s IQ by at least 30 points,” Laurie piped up.

Kovacs ignored her, a miracle in itself. “Have been analysing the virus’ remains. Recalled, when I ran 16-bit decryption on this, triggering defensive barrage, that same underlying pattern emerged from Blake’s data.”

He projected onto the table, cupping his hands around the image for privacy.

“What the – smiley emoticons?”

Laurie snorted as Kovacs quickly snapped the image off. “So you’re saying a 12-year-old girl tried to kill Veidt?” She squirmed in her seat until she had both feet tucked under her rear, suddenly looking much younger.

“Russian hardware damaged memory. Forgot signature hidden in raw data until seen again.”

Dreiberg whistled. “You’re saying Blake designed that thing? I know he’s run some effective assaults in his time, but that…”

Kovacs shook his head, huffing in frustration. “No, it’s him, but not him. Like wallpaper, not code. There’s…no life in it.”

Laurie tapped her fingers, obviously craving a cigarette. “So he’s a zombie?”

Kovacs growled and crossed his arms.

“Laurie…”

“He was my sperm donor – I can say what I want!”

But to Kovacs he’d been a living idol, miraculously stepped down from his ivory pedestal to mentor him, Dreiberg wanted to say, but he didn’t think Kovacs would appreciate it. To the other white hats in their loose confederation, Blake had simply singled out an unstable young man for special abuse, but Kovacs had gratefully soaked up the attention and learned by unpicking Blake’s escalating damage. Dreiberg supposed that had made the old bastard Kovacs’ only other friend in the world.

“I only meant, like Hollis. It would have been just like him to have a back-up plan in place. Hey, maybe Veidt killed him, and Blake’s getting revenge from beyond the grave!”

Dreiberg felt his mouth drop open. “Laurie, I don’t even know where to start. Firstly, Hollis is _not_ a zombie…”

“Start with tracing strike’s origin,” Kovacs broke in. “Should confront the Mystic with Blake’s message – perhaps it contains coordinates.”

“Don’t tell me you believe Veidt could ever, ever – ”

“Miss Isham’s hypothesis corresponds with current evidence. Merits investigation.”

Was Laurie actually preening under Kovacs’ tacit approval? “I’ll take on the Mystic. No offence, but he’ll tell a good customer more than you’ll ever get out of him.”

“Mystic’s apartment under surveillance. Not safe.”

Laurie flicked her razors out and admired the way they gleamed in the diner’s greasy fluorescents. “Not for them, no.”

“I agree with Kovacs – at the very least, you aren’t going in there without back-up.”

“K isn’t on very good terms with the Mystic after yesterday – by the way, that controlled Semtex you’re working on is great stuff – and I don’t think the two of you have ever even spoken. It’s me by my lonesome or nothing.”

Kovacs shook his head. “Not safe,” he insisted again.

“Fine,” she snapped. “That connection, thingie, you did between us – can you cross a few extra filaments with some chewing gum and make it remote?”

“Connection?” Dreiberg asked.

“Possibly,” Kovacs replied thoughtfully. “Would need to install secure broadcaster.”

“I’m sorry, go back to this connection?”

“Install where, exactly?”

“Neckjack, obviously.”

“Oh, no, mister – you’re not putting anything that close to my brain.”

Kovacs heaved a put-upon sigh. “Could use wrist again. Less efficient, more lag in transmitting.”

“I’m sure we can afford a couple of milliseconds’ delay.”

“Excuse me! Both of you – stop jabbering and explain this ‘connection.’”

Laurie shrugged. “I used him as hardware to keep looking for you while K caught a few z’s. So I’m thinking it can work in reverse, too, with my gear. That’s all. Look, K, what kind of upgrade are we talking about here?”

“TXC-380 chip. Removable, not hardwired.”

“Didn’t those things lobotomise their test subjects?”

“That was 300-model. 380 lacks defect.”

“Fine, but we’re using a dampener.”

“For best quality…”

“Trust me on the dampener.”

“You used _him_ , as hardware? How does that even…”

“K, can you check the balance on this thing?”

Kovacs slotted a credit chip into the back of his skull and nodded. “Enough. Will also cover temporary base of operation. Should search for hotel on independent connection, in case diner’s wireless is being monitored.”

Their fingers touched, passing the credit chip, and Kovacs hadn't wiped them off on his shirt. Dreiberg wondered if he’d been driven through any looking-glasses on the way over. Laurie was dodging a subject for the first time since he’d met her, and he tried not to think that the only people he’d ever heard of hooking in together were stupid, horny kids experimenting with biofeedback, or that it would be illegal if the law didn’t lag a century behind technology. Some remote part of his id gibbered that his partners were carrying on a hasty affair behind his back, but mercifully balked at picturing the seduction…until he suddenly realised it would have spiralled out from comparing modifications, shirts discarded to contrast spliced spines, hers seamlessly integrated by Holowood’s best technicians, his left chunky and raw by the drunken ministrations of back-alley machinists, both monochromatic in the bleaching light of monitors – it would be a dirty version of Veidt’s office, all exposed wires and rows of raised buttons that did nothing but appeal to Kovacs’ retro-aesthetic sensibilities – only natural to jack in together to explore the similarities in-depth…

“Daniel?”

“Hmmm?” Dreiberg knew he should be grateful to be dragged away from his thoughts.

“Not listening. Going now.” Kovacs nudged him out of the booth, staring past his shoulder in a way Dreiberg usually interpreted as avoiding eye contact.

“Wouldn’t you usually go to the Mystic for something like this?” Laurie asked. “That kinda negates the element of sneakiness we're aiming for.”

“Have an alternative. Will introduce you. Both of you.”

Drebierg wasn’t sure if he should feel touched or terrified at his partner’s sudden openness, and split the difference. “Kovacs, why…” he began with trepidation.

“May need in future. Mystic unreliable at best of times.”

Laurie grabbed both of their elbows as they cut through the crowded sidewalks toward a nearby alley. She must have expected Kovacs to pull himself free, but looked at Dreiberg in concern when he made a pained noise and shivered. They followed Kovacs up a fire escape to the relative privacy of a tenement roof.

“What’s wrong? Jeez, everyone’s grossed out by my touch tonight.”

Kovacs stiffened and set about establishing a wireless connection with exaggerated care.

“No, no – it’s just that my skin’s still convinced it was ripped off and put back on inside out, since that thing stripped my armor. Psychosomatic, but nevertheless stings like hell.”

“Ouch,” Laurie replied sympathetically. “And my mother wondered why I never wanted to spend my life fighting imaginary monsters.”

“No armor?” Kovacs asked sharply, fingers moving over an invisible keypad.

“No, it’s gone. I’m as free and easy out there as you, now. It’ll be a few weeks before I can work up a new set, assuming our own personalised strike viruses aren’t en route as I speak, freeing me from the bother of forward planning.”

Kovacs shook his head. “Nothing on horizon. Have reserved hotel room. Come on.”

He took them to his back-up supplier first. Dreiberg recognised him by the geometric tattoos on the back of his neck.

“Chess? Thought you were still in jail.”

Chess watched nervously as Kovacs pawed through his wares. “Got out in May.”

“Any stims?” Kovacs grunted.

“No, you cleaned me out last week,” Chess replied quickly. “Said I’d let you know when I got more in.”

Kovacs frowned, but spat out, “Good. Need TXC-380 chip. In stock?”

“Just one,” Chess said, and fished the small box out from a locked drawer. “Here.”

Kovacs examined it carefully, slotting it into his skull with a thoughtful _hurm_.

“You still dealing KT?” Dreiberg asked quietly. He was surprised Kovacs would work with Chess, given his incarceration, and vice versa, since Kovacs had put him there.

Chess snorted, eyes locked on Kovacs. “Only stims, and only to him. Knowing the little bastard could pop in at any time keeps me straighter than my parole officer.”

Kovacs popped the chip out. “Will take. Also need unlocked armor set.”

“That’s not cheap, even for you,” Chess warned, carefully.

Kovacs pulled a leatherman from his pocket and opened the synthskin on his left palm. He isolated the circuit and pried out a two-centimetre square. Dreiberg recognised it as a highly specialised storage unit, meant to keep custom viruses from infecting the system that carried them. “Trade.”

Chess wiped the blood off the component and examined it critically. “This has seen a lot of use…”

“Broken in,” Kovacs growled, trying to tuck the synthskin closed. It dangled limply away from his hand, refusing to connect, so he ripped the swatch off with an impatient mumble about foreign-made goods. Laurie handed him a filthy microcloth without a word, and he wrapped it around the wound.

“Kovacs, I can’t accept – you need that.”

“Have spare drive.” He held up his other hand, flexing it so Dreiberg could see the outline of another embedded in the palm. “Do not have spare partner.”

His head tilted fractionally toward Laurie. “Don’t have _useful_ spare,” he amended. She smiled and poked his wounded palm, hard.

“I’ll take it,” Chess interrupted, shoving a different chip toward Dreiberg. “But only if you take your girlfriends and get out now, you creepy son of a bitch.”

His voice shook like an autumn leaf, betraying his bravado. Kovacs dropped the credit chip on the counter, casually dragging a sparking fingertip along an exposed data strip.

“Interesting business strategy,” he said, nodding toward a grill over Chess’s head. “Mounted fletcher, pointed at customers. Military-grade, and unregistered.”

“Hey, you know how often I get shot at in this job?” When Kovacs didn’t answer, Chess slowly moved both hands to the top of the counter, away from the triggering mechanism Kovacs had found. “I got that at a government surplus auction – completely legitimate!”

“And neurotoxin darts inside fletcher?”

Chess flinched. “Same auction,” he insisted weakly.

Dreiberg and Laurie sidled toward the door, out of range.

“No record of any such auction since your release.”

“A, uh, a friend got it for me. He, uh, aw, shit. Look, I’m getting some real primo gear in at the end of the week – you can have first pick, on the house, okay?”

“Attempting bribery?”

Chess deflated. He yanked the grill from the wall and handed him the fletcher. Kovacs removed the dart clip and returned the emptied fletcher to the surprised man.

“Expect to see registration certificate next time,” he growled, and palmed the darts into the nearest compactor outside, ignoring his partners’ curious stares.

The hotel wasn’t as bad as expected. There were no windows, and the carpet squished under their feet, but there were two beds and, Laurie was surprisingly enthusiastic to discover, a bathroom. Dreiberg settled on one of the beds to tinker with his new armor while the other two argued over installation matrixes and settled on a compromise that neither was happy with. The armor was reassuringly thick, but felt wrong – too tight across the shoulders, somehow. He laid the first of dozens of anti-viral cryptographs over the standard programming, remembering Hollis’s early lessons. Hollis…he should check in with Hollis, like he’d promised to do more often, but there wasn’t any time. He’d make it up to him.

“Okay,” Laurie chirped, pulling her sleeve lower to cover the new cradle installed in her wristjack. “Let’s fire this puppy up!”

She shivered as it activated. “Uck. Oh, that doesn’t…I’m gonna be sick, clear a path! Wait…wait…deep breathing is my friend…no, okay. Okay. Hey, it’s asking me if I want to install an essential patch. Yes?”

“No!” the two men chorused.

“Patch deactivates chip,” Kovacs insisted.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Fine, install patch. See result.”

“Only if it’s been previously owned,” Dreiberg broke in. “It’s meant to stave off a secondhand market. Most of our gear is the same – you’ve just got to go in and clean that out of the rootkit. I’ll show you how sometime.”

“Oh,” she said, staring at her wrist like someone else’s hand had been sewn on it. “So this is, what, some dead guy’s?”

“Perfectly safe,” K grunted, rubbing his temples underneath the laminate. “Wouldn’t risk system integrity with dirty hardware. Activating receiver now.”

“I’m touched you care so much,” she grumbled and bounced on the balls of her feet. “God, I could use a jog. Is this working, or what?”

Kovacs swayed and carefully lowered himself onto the other bed. “Enk…standing still and jumping simultaneously. Things…shifting…not natural.”

“Now do you believe the dampener was a good idea? I was…my system was designed to project every possible sensation, literally kilobytes per second.” She stretched to touch her toes, her spine popping.

Kovacs swayed forward. “Perhaps,” he allowed.

“This feels so weird. Not tingly. More like just after you’ve stopped being tingly.” She rubbed her neck and fluffed out her lank hair. “Ew. Add a shower to the list of things I need, like, thirty-five minutes ago.”

Kovacs gurgled something that might have been “…soft…” and cleared his throat harshly. “Must calibrate, lower output.”

Dreiberg tuned them out again as that set off another argument. Their bickering faded into familiar white noise as he set his armor aside for the moment and focused on the Russian death trap, impersonating an innocuous hard drive on the threadbare duvet in front of him. It might contain the answers to all their questions, or even just an intriguing bastard’s last will and testimony. Dreiberg would settle for either. It would be so easy to pop in a connection while the other two were distracted, take a quick peek…after all, he’d just smoked the monster that terrified Veidt’s entire security force – how difficult could this little box be?

Only his partner’s grey pallor convinced him to return to Veidt’s comparatively dull assignment. He carefully hacked into Pyramid’s central data hub and made a silent run through their main programming cycle before slipping back out unnoticed. There were similarities between their templates and what he remembered from the beast’s outer matrix. But the material Veidt had handed him lacked Pyramid identifiers, as if they’d only been on the surface. Like camouflage…

“No, K, that’s as low as it goes. You’ll just have to deal with it.”

“Is hogging bandwidth. Sending even single-digit reply like punching through concrete. Must reduce output.”

“A single digit is exactly as much as I ever want to hear from you, buddy. You are _not_ sabotaging me.”

“Is it working?” Dreiberg asked.

“Only too well.” Laurie flopped onto the bed next to Kovacs, who scooted to the opposite edge and teetered. She hauled him back by the elbow. “God, do I smell? Actually, don’t answer that. You two really know how to make a girl feel like an international sex symbol.”

Kovacs shuddered but kept his mouth shut, tucking knees to his chest and crossing his arms over them. Conserving warmth, Dreiberg thought, counting the hours since Kovacs had last disappeared from the basement for a few moments to jab a stim needle anywhere Dreiberg wouldn’t see the mark. Withdrawal would be setting in soon, the exact time depending on how much sugar he’d managed to get into his stomach while they were separated.

“Hey, that reminds me,” Laurie chirped, elbowing Kovacs. “We figured you’d know – what’s normal-people sex like?”

Dreiberg had had a background program running in his head since the moment Laurie showed up on his doorstep looking for shelter from her too-visible life, attempting to generate the perfect opening line that would make a goddess forget it came from the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man. It chugged away even after it was clear she was less goddess than the world’s oldest living spoiled teenager, once driving him to say _I love the way you cause trouble_ , earning him a brilliant peal of laughter and a sisterly kiss on the cheek. Now it let loose with a quick halleluiah chorus and offered up the command: _That…requires a demonstration *cheeky smile*_

His lips were already opening when the tattered shreds of his common sense slammed on the brakes ( _”we,” she said “we”_ ) and Laurie bumped shoulders with Kovacs, her wicked grin pointed at his freakish surly 98-pound-weakling _bastard_ partner, whose mouth, Dreiberg suddenly realised, was the tight miserable crescent of a toddler about to be spanked for refusing to share his most precious toy.

For once, he was glad the laminate covered most of Kovacs’ expression, and wished for a mask of his own. The shift from transcendent joy to preemptive rejection had left his jaw charley-horsed.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” he sighed and turned away, re-setting his rig to his temples. “Kovacs, can you keep an eye on her and my vitals at the same time? I need to go deeper into Pyramid.”

“Of course!” Was there a note of relief under the outrage at Dreiberg doubting his ability to multitask? 

Kovacs scrambled over to the bed Daniel had claimed, setting up the electrodes with his head ducked low, either watching one of them from the corner of his eye or determinately ignoring them both. Dreiberg, on a hunch, extended his awareness into the hotel’s wireless network and felt the ripples as Kovacs punched another post through to the super-secret cyberlog he’d never particularly tried to hide from Dreiberg. He could find it easily, probably even break in with enough persistence (and a few minutes away from his partner’s ever-present surveillance), but he’d never been tempted to violate that privacy. Much.

Laurie fidgeted on the other bed, watching Dreiberg attach electrodes to his chest. After a few minutes of awkward silence, she stood and stuffed her long hair under her cap. “Since this has gotten very boys-only all of a sudden, I’ll…I’ll be on my way.”

Dreiberg nodded without removing his visor.

“Careful,” Kovacs mumbled.

She slammed the door behind her.

Kovacs swallowed hard and leaned, carefully, against the wall. He dug his nails into his palms, breathing through his nose.

“If you’re not up to this…”

Kovacs shook his head. “Will become accustomed to…movement…talking… Enk.” 

“Let’s go then.” Dreiberg reminded himself Kovacs hadn’t actually done anything wrong, probably, and sighed. “Have a theory this thing only used Pyramid as an entrance, originating outside the V-A system. I’ll need you to keep a weather eye out for anything like Blake’s work or…well…Blake. If he’s in here somewhere, which I really really doubt, you might be able to draw him out.”

_And then we can put him in a jar with Hollis and officially have more dead than living friends. Hell and damnation…_

* * *


	8. Chapter 8

Their hotel was a few minutes’ walk from the Mystic’s. Laurie set off in the opposite direction, jumping from the fourth-floor window to a ledge across the way. Her gloves, inlaid with dozens of ceramic barbs, gripped the pockmarked concrete as she swung around the corner and dropped to land on an aluminium awning two floors down and then – what the hell – pulled off a tight flip learned from her stint as Tokyo Action Girl on her way to the alley below. The landing – dipping low to spread the shock evenly through her joints before smoothly standing – was automatic, practiced and recorded thousands of times.

She hoped it made Kovacs sick. Ideally all over Dreiberg.

Laurie had an idea what he was feeling – the sense-churning doubling she’d gone through every time she plugged into the rough cut of her performances – and wasn’t entirey unsympathetic. A final holo product was simultracked with a neural white noise that temporarily disconnected the audience from their own nervous system, which was a concept that now creeped her out no end. It wouldn’t be impossible to make that disconnection permanent, not for someone as skilled as Dreiberg but lacking the goody-two-shoes on their feet.

So, it was the wired-world’s good fortune that he was an ambitionless pompous jerkass, who took advantage of other people’s willingness to pitch in for a cause that was completely not their problem in any way. 

He took her in. She owed him. And it was fun, sometimes, getting one over on the world’s smaller bastards. That was it. She certainly hadn’t signed on as permanent babysitter for his frighteningly repressed pet sociopath.

The frighteningly repressed sociopath currently riding on her nerves, hearing through her ears, undoubtably confused – goddamn, let him just be confused – by the restless electricity under her skin that reminded her she was a young, healthy human being, one who’d never had to suffer months without the intimate company of other human beings. Well, genetically human, anyway. Surgically fit, synthetically youthful, plastic fantastics that, up close, looked more like the first wave of Planet Krebulon’s effete invasion force.

It had been convenient, really, that they were all identikit wired for uniform sensation – not that they’d do something as base as fuck-vids, of course, only thematically important scenes in artistic endeavours – so she never had to learn any new techniques. Just point and click.

“Uck.”

A question mark flickered in the corner of her vision, projected by a small chip in her shades.

“Why ‘uck’?” she asked.

A few moments later the question mark was replaced with an N. She thought and tried again. “Where am I going?”

Y.

“For a walk. Am I allowed off the leash long enough for that?”

The Y disappeared, leaving a blank cursor. At least he was smart enough not to answer.

Laurie lurked for a few minutes, watching the movement around her for signs of the thugs that had chased them into the heights. She was disappointed to find none. They seemed to have successfully thrown them, for the time being.

She turned onto the main street and dashed through the crowd to the pedestrian underpass, keeping her head down. Laurie had picked up the habit of avoiding the main streets and their closed-circuit cameras except on slow days, when they’d go out separately and stride with great purpose nowhere in particular, laying false tracks to throw off future investigations. That would be a little more difficult with her new shades, which were harder to hide than her fingernails. Not for the first time, she thought about Chiba City’s black market surgeons, about unremarkable features that would let her disappear completely. 

Of course, in a dating pool where even noodle-slingers saved their fractions toward the perfect nose, the perfect tits, a dull face would get her even less tail than a nun’s wimple.

She thought of Amsterdam as the underpass’s stink filled her sinuses, of jogging along the dry canals with Jon gliding next to her on her security detail’s armoured transport, his lips moving as he communicated via wireless with the home office. He idly disguised his transport for her amusement, flickering from white steed to twisty dragon to a growling twentieth-century tank, which had charmed Laurie most of all.

Stale urine should not be nostalgic, Laurie thought as she spat out the bitter effluence of her re-routed tear ducts and rubbed her nose. Other pedestrians swerved to avoid the spittle without looking at her, thinking: Contamination. Plague. She shielded her face against a particularly harsh blast of grit on the opposite sidewalk and ducked out of the wind. She wasn’t the only brave soul seeking the shelter of the unmonitored alleys, but she was probably the only one who felt the lack of cameras with relief. This was her new home turf, the long unseen spread between Dreiberg’s and the Mystics where tourists feared to tread.

Like Kovacs and his rooftops, up where the signal was strong.

“I had a stretch like this in Holowood, too,” she whispered. “I patrolled whenever my security detail made the mistake of leaving me alone in any room with a window. You know how many bathroom vents I’ve crawled through, just to get a little me-time? Sally always threw a fit when I came back, blamed it on Blake’s ribonucleic contamination, but I think she was a little proud, too. Like I was some kinda white hat, anyway.”

No response. “You still there, K?”

The cursor reappeared and blinked.

“Good,” she said, not sure why that was good. It wasn’t like he could go anywhere – the connection could only be turned off on her end. Which might actually be a good idea, at least until she got closer to the Mystic’s. Unfortunately, radio silence was guaranteed to get the two of them charging after her, panicked and ready to do as much damage to her theoretical abductors as a toothpick and a beach ball could.

“I hate silence.”

The cursor blinked.

“Silence means the other person’s gonna fill it. And what do they fill it with? How much they love Sally Isham. How awesome it is to meet her daughter. Like I’m supposed to respond: _Wow, you love my mother, I love my mother, what am amazing and singular connection! Would you like my agent’s number so you can be a big holostar too, or will a blowjob suffice?_ ”

The cursor froze mid-blink.

“The really sophisticated ones, they tell me I’m so lucky to work with a genius like Jon, practically have an orgasm right there talking about the saturation levels of their favourite Osterman hues. Once in a while I’m lucky enough to get a real creep, one who idolises Blake and wants to be just like him. Starting with Sally Isham’s daughter.”

She snorted. “I swear to god, when his death finally gets out and the media rehashes all that shit with him and my mother, I’m taking a shovel to my face and fleeing to Antarctica.”

* * *

“…hmmm… possible impact on muscle memory. Will investigate further.”

“On what now?” Dreiberg replied to the first coherent string of words to emerge from his partner’s grumbling in several minutes. He’d have an opening between virus sweeps in 26 seconds, and nothing to keep him occupied through the long wait.

“Direct application of another’s experience to nerves. Any sense memory remains?” He carefully raised and lowered his arms, then rubbed at his lower abdomen with a grimace. “Most likely of use with vat-grown assassins. Hook into sensations while growing, shorten necessary training period even further.”

Dreiberg watched him twitch spastically, tensing in something like sheer horror, then self-consciously relax his muscles. 

In retrospect, it hadn’t been the best idea to super-stimulate someone on the verge of endocrinal DTs. Or to leave that man in charge of his most intimate functions while Dreiberg went into Pyramid’s well-guarded server nest. Lacking any other option, they’d just have to play a very poor hand very, very well. “If that was true, every holo-fanatic would know kung fu. The real addicts actually lose coordination.”

“…hunh. Perhaps deadening would be ultimate goal. Reduce abilities of general population.”

The whiplash gymnastics of Kovacs’ paranoia drew a reluctant chuckle out of him. “Moderation’s the key. As with everything. Hell, they never hurt my reflexes!”

There – the security drones passed each other and paused for milliseconds to exchange sweep data. Dreiberg leapt into the gap in their recording and quickly wedged himself in the nearest good camouflage – a receptionist’s online-keno account cache.

_Naughty, naughty,_ he thought, almost unbearably tempted to kill time before the next inner perimeter’s weakness by tracking down the employee’s manager and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to the mini-gambling den. He’d nearly convinced himself it would be not only fun but just when he realised nearly twenty seconds of real time had passed and – he peeked – Kovacs was still glaring, his mouth tight and scandalised.

“Hey, it was the old Sally Isham hacks,” Dreiberg said defensively. “Some of the very first megacorp burns, recorded for posterity.”

“Hmph.”

“Only the ones with Hollis – they were educational!”

* * *

Kovacs preferred the heights because they were safe, as long as a person had no problems with crumbling structures, vicious gusts, or an abundance of sharp rusted objects to impale oneself on when the wind knocked over your perch. Laurie preferred the alleys because they weren’t. The Sprawl was kind to her, providing a terrified young courier and two knuckledraggers bristling with Syndicate hardware.

“Seito-sama won’t be happy to hear that, not at all. Onsha has an agreement with Mercury couriers in this neighbourhood, and this is not the first time we’ve crossed paths, Wesley. You know the drill.”

They were huge, too, probably local boys stuffed with beef cattle hormones from puberty. Their profiles were visibly pockmarked, a peculiar vanity in a city where artificial pores were bought with teenagers’ walking-around credits. They didn’t need to be attractive. And they weren’t going down easily, she judged, humming happily.

“No, oh god, it’s a V-A communiqué…”

“Nuh-uh, Seito-sama will be _most_ displeased. Best you dump what you got between your ears on my little drive here, if you don’t want your knees bending the other way.”

“Bu-but, it requires a Level-12 password, and I don’t got it!” the courier squeaked. “Only the client got it! I really – ”

“My associate’s real good at cracking passwords. And skulls. You wanna do this the hard way, we’ll scoop it right out of your grey stuff.”

“Oh God, I really – please – ”

Laurie left her nails sheathed – they were better for subtle work, and these two didn’t seem like the nuance type. She grabbed a broken power strip from a nearby trash heap and cracked the closer one in the rear neckjack instead. He jerked and fell to his knees, momentarily overwhelmed by internal feedback. That took his recorder out of commission, and a hard punch to his bowed head took the side of beef ferrying it around temporarily out as well. The other one turned as she leapt at him and, quick on his feet for a lump of scar tissue, backhanded her across the jaw.

Laurie admired that, how he’d already been shifting his body’s turning momentum to his arm before he consciously registered his assailant. She filed it away under _Awesome Moves To Learn_ and tumbled backwards over his buddy.

* * *

Kovacs gasped and fell off the bed just as Dreiberg was readying himself to breach Pyramid’s security core. It was too late to abort. He dove in as Kovacs opened his mouth and security klaxons blared to life, hoped his blood pressure was holding steady as he nimbly cut through the bramble of their inner firewall, reached the central shell that most resembled the strike virus’s appearance as Kovacs started to slide, and had filtered through and replicated the necessary segments before Kovacs’ fists balled into the duvet and hauled the rest of himself upright.

“Laurie – ”

“Need some help here,” Dreiberg interrupted, fighting halfway back out before getting forced, nanometre by nanometre, into a corner in the time it took him to get the words out.

Kovacs let himself fall toward the damp carpet as he briefly abandoned the meat to follow Dreiberg and barrelled into the tight formation holding him in place. They scattered and raggedly reformed, turning like a flock of birds on an unseen updraft.

Dreiberg turned to attack, feeling his lips pull into a slow, savage snarl as he stunned one, then two drones, forcing their technicians to disconnect and take a long unscheduled nap. Three more blipped out of existence to the right. The remainder clumped together, turning erratically as they looked for the second invader and the unfortunate ones found him. Dreiberg rushed past them, feeling his partner at his heels. He knew better than to look at him directly.

He’d see nothing. No idealised human, no tiger, no starfield. Just an unfocusable shape like mist on waves, a matrix that spoke directly to the primitive roots of the software they rode on, forcing it to analyse the meaningless data for cognates. Hell, it could even catch Dreiberg out, and he’d had years of practice filtering it from his input.

They were free and disconnecting from Pyramid’s server as Kovacs’ body squelched to the carpet. He scrambled to his feet and staggered to the door. Dreiberg ripped the electrodes from his chest and called after him, “What’s happening to Laurie?"

“Getting killed,” Kovacs snarled and wheeled to the right, stumbling over his feet. He pushed himself determinately back in the right direction before grabbing the wall for support. “No…actually…”

He shook his head as Dreiberg helped him back to the bed. “Where is she? I’ll go.”

“Fine now. Insane woman. Argh…”

“What’s – ”

Kovacs grasped for air. “Never doing this again,” he declared.

* * *

The courier was running for it, hauling his skinny ass back to the halos of street lights. That was good. Laurie’s head rang from the gorilla’s blow, but she was perfectly placed to kick the first thug in the face before he recovered, and that was also good. His nose mashed sideways into his cheek, bearing the pattern of her treads.

His friend carefully leaned to check his injuries, showing more caution than she’d like. Still, her legs were long enough to reach and crack his kneecap if she didn’t mind scooting her ass along the slimy pavement. He shuffled just out of range, but overbalanced trying to grab her foot and left his neck open.

“Who are – aiigh!”

She flicked her razors out as she jumped, plunged two into the skin next to the nearest transmitter, curled her fingers, and yanked. The metal pulled loose with a gush of arterial blood. She rolled and scrambled to her feet as he slapped his hand over it.

“Who are _you_?” she growled back, not really interested in an answer. He was hired muscle threatening an innocent-enough victim. What else did Tokyo Action Girl need to know? More importantly, he was good, someone she could learn from.

Unfortunately, he was also smarter than he looked. He slapped a pressure bandage over his neck, never taking his eyes off her, then threw his unconscious partner over his shoulder and hoofed it without looking back.

“Well…crap,” she said, watching the foreign blood run in beads from her fingertips as the razors retracted. Her mouth was dry and tasted like the bottom of the Gunga’s vindaloo pot. She threw a few punches at the shadows and turned, trying to push the force of it from her heel up to her hand the way the Syndicate muscle had. Her muscles stretched like knotty plasticine, resisting and demanding more.

“Hey mister, you okay?” The courier, calling from the alley’s mouth. “Mister?”

“Why don’t you send up a flare?” she muttered, moving deeper into the concealing gloom, toward the Mystic’s.

“Wow,” he breathed, her tweaked eardrums easily picking up the words. “An actual street samurai. No one’s ever gonna believe this!”

Nor should they, she thought. The urban legends of freelance do-gooders were greatly exaggerated. Mostly young punks in nascent gangs trying to establish themselves on the turf of others, sometimes saving would-be victims in a sort of collateral altruism. As far as Laurie knew, she was the only one who put on baggy clothes that hid her moderately famous figure and went out specifically looking for trouble to break up. 

Not unlike her boys, but more direct. More _fun_.

She wished her heart would stop beating so hard, closing her throat with every pulse.

“Still there, K?”

The cursor blinked to a rhythm that implied she was in the doghouse. She wondered if it was Morse code.

“Good. Make a note, will you – assuming we survive this one, we look into this ‘Seito’ fella next. If he’s figured out a way to crack secure data couriers, the black market is gonna get ugly, and fast.”

Y.

“Y as in ‘yes’ or Y as in W-H-Y?” Laurie reached the edge of the alley and leapt up to a fire escape to survey the sidewalk. It was a solid wall of commuter urgency this close to the main drag.

A long pause, then another Y.

“That’s not really helpful. We probably should have worked out a code before I left, you know? I would have thought of that if things hadn’t gotten weird. Here, for ‘yes,’ send ‘K,’ like ‘okay.’ Like Kovacs. Heh, and for ‘no,’ ‘D’ – like Dreiberg. Like, ‘no, I’m too good to answer a simple question for a thickie like Laurie. Hmph.”

She sidled into the crowd, slouching, and let the tide carry her north, following eddies until she reached the other side and the safety of another cctv-less stretch.

“I swear, every time he looks at me he still sees the gawky 12-year-old Sally tarted up like a scarecrow concubine to meet Hollis Junior. It shoots me right to the moon, you know? Had a bellyful of that attitude from Mom and her entourage – we know what’s good for you, you’re too young to decide, leave it all to us. And what’d that get me, huh?”

The cursor blinked.

“Yeah, exactly. Bupkas. Ooooh, hold that thought.”

Another learning opportunity in her road – a clandestine deal, possibly weapons? That would be fun.

No, she saw, just drugs. And too aware by half – the dealer saw her and shoved his customer’s hand away. They scattered like cockroaches in two directions, neither worth pursuing. She sighed. 

“I would really, really like to punch something.”

K.

Laurie smirked. “You can’t tell me you’re not enjoying this, at least a little. How often do you get to beat someone up, huh?”

D.

“No, of course not.”

A flicker of reflected lights made her peek cautiously around the next corner, taking in the brutal civi-cops throwing a collection of modern disadvantaged youth in their hovering paddy wagon. She climbed to the roof and detoured west, not quite daring to fly over their heads. Sprawl police were often issued with the neurotoxin darts denied civilians, and rarely stuck with the ‘stun’ dose of just one. At least they’d cleared out the alleys for several blocks, leaving her in isolation when she touched concrete again. The deep breaths that were not calming at all echoed off the walls.

“Fuck. Can anything else go right tonight?”

K.

She flicked her vision to infrared and scanned the alley. Nothing. There were a few moving shapes inside the buildings, but faint through layers of brick and plastiform. No windows. Muffled curses and blows echoed along the ancient brickwork, making her twitch with envy. She ducked into a blind corner to wait out the disturbance and leaned on the wall, feeling the sore lump forming on her jaw.

“That’s gonna be a pretty one, I can tell now. All lumpy and purple.”

K.

“Not that it matters with the company I keep. Dan’s a monk and you’re afraid of your own dick. Which, given your upbringing, is probably the best of all possible scenarios.”

The cursor froze.

“Most boys would have grown into psycho serial killers, probably. But you didn’t, so, you know, kudos for that.”

Nothing.

“Is that thing stuck?”

It blinked once.

“So, um, ‘nothing’ is our code for ‘mortified silence’?”

… 

K.

“Fine, fine. I was just trying to help. My mother said her analyst insisted she talk everything out, especially the really crap years when she was first out on her own. Even though he taped it all and tried to blackmail her with it, she still said it helped.”

D.

“No?”

**D.**

“…I bet you’re wishing we made a code for ‘shut up’.”

**K.**

“You’re not getting one, either.”

* * *

“I’ve got a name – probably another intended victim. Unless this is the kind of cowboy who literally signs his work. Jacobi – you ever hear of it?”

“No. Someone has. Starting search, uhn...”

Kovacs frantically shook his head and rubbed his temples, distracting Dreiberg from his liberated data. “You going to make it?”

It was nearly a minute before Kovacs answered faintly, as if he’d been punched. “Will be over soon.”

“Are you looking at this?”

“Hmm.”

“It definitely came through Pyramid, but damned if I can say from where. It’s like it just appeared mid-file. And here, this is Blake’s work, right? Looks like the same stuff…or am I wrong? Is this set more…lively?”

Kovacs studied it for several heartbeats before shaking his head. “No. Is appropriated. Hack and slash – a _good_ hack and slash – but not Blake.”

Dreiberg hesitated. “I…well, I was distracted on the way out, but I didn’t see anything that might be a consciousness-dump in there. It’s not impossible he’s somewhere out there, but the only reason we suspected in the first place was this stretch of code…”

Kovacs looked away.

“I’m sorry, man. I think he’s really gone.”

“Ask Sally Isham,” Kovacs muttered, crossing his arms.

“Oh for – ” Dreiberg yanked the rig from his forehead and threw it to the bedspread. Carefully. “You can’t let anything go, can you? Yes, I used to watch the old holos, like everyone else in the world. If a crush on Sally Isham makes me debauched, I’m just one of 11 million wankers.”

Dreiberg wished he’d left his rig on, so he could snap a shot of Kovacs’ gape-mouthed shock. He recovered all too quickly.

“Ordinary world obsessed with bloated, aging whore. Expected better of you, Daniel. Also, should take care to never share this view with Miss Isham. Would not appreciate.”

“What the hell is up with you two?” 

“Attempted to make nice, as ordered. Now reprimanded for succeeding.”

“I turn my back for a few hours, and you turn into the world’s sole remaining Laurie Isham fangirl? Are you two trading mash texts right now?”

“Inappropriate, Daniel! Will not tolerate slur on – ”

“You brought it up, buddy!”

Kovacs’ mouth snapped shut with an audible click. “Merely suggested,” he ground out, “having Miss Isham contact mother. Knew of Blake’s death. Had emotional connection. Possibly entrusted with priceless information, if Blake suspected fatal plot.”

“Oh.” Dreiberg realised he was looming over Kovacs’ bed, and slowly lowered his clenched fist. “That’s…probably a good hunch.”

He gathered up the scattered electrodes and took his time putting them in the latex-lined pockets of his bag. “You could stand to use a few more words sometimes, you know?”

Kovacs spasmed, cracking his head on the wall.

* * *


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extremely dubious consent all 'round...

Laurie rubbed her arms, getting chilly now that she wasn’t running or fighting. “I’m not bringing this up for my own benefit, you know. I just see something broken that doesn’t need to be.”

D.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re exactly where you want to be in life, I get that. You’re just, you know, missing out. No one should have to miss out. Especially not when it’d be a snap to fix, just get you laid – ”

**D**.

“ – and you’ll be all, hey, there’s no blood and guts at all – ”

**D**.

“ – just good groiny fun. Yay.”

**D**.

**!**.

Laurie shrugged. “Okay, so it wouldn’t be an instant fix, but a damn good start. The hard part is finding a willing vict- a partner. Since I’m assuming a pro is out of the question – ”

**!**.

“ – and, as I’d assume you’re aware, your personality does not exactly overcome the social handicap of rocking that over-plugged power strip look. You’ve got even less chance of attracting a fuckbuddy than I seem to have.”

She hummed thoughtfully. “You’d think the solutions to our very different problems would dovetail rather neatly there, but no. No offence taken, I’m sure. Plus, I get the impression we both need someone who knows what _he_ ’s doing.”

**D**.

**!**.

“An exclamation point is not code for ‘shut up, shut up, shut up,’ by the way. It actually stands for: ‘Thank you for your concern, Laurie dear, please do go on.’”

The cursor blinked furiously.

Laurie crossed her arms, realising a moment later she was dragging the flat of one nailblade along her exposed collarbone. It felt _good_ , dammit. She peeked around the corner and hopefully scanned for criminals.

Nothing.

Even the noise of civi-cop pacification faded, the cut off abruptly with a slammed door and the poot-poot-pootle of the wagon’s anti-gravs pushing their human load into the sky.

Laurie fished through her calf pocket, finding her nail sharpener, a broken knuckle-guard, a coupon for Harga’s House of Ribs on the East side, and a small rubber ball the size of a doll’s eyeball. She bounced it off the opposite wall, catching it on the rebound as the toy’s antistatic self-cleaning system shucked off pocket lint. She could almost hear the fuzz land in the hushed alley, as if she were the last person alive in the entire Sprawl. Just her and her silent, watchful passenger.

“I’ve just had the most brilliant idea ever,” she whispered, touching the ball’s seam. It split in two, forming soft, half-melted crescents that glommed onto her index and middle fingertips. “Secondhand experience fucked you up…maybe it’s the solution, too. Sorta poetical.”

She tapped the crescents together against her thumb, shivering as they began to buzz on their lowest setting.

* * *

It was only three long steps to the bed where his partner jerked and twisted, time enough after Dreiberg slammed the VR helmet back over his temples to review everything there was to know about withdrawal-induced seizures. He’d had the relevant chapters of several EMT encyclopedias bookmarked for years, now, anticipating the moment when Kovacs would finally overstretch his legendary stamina and crash, incontrovertible proof his stim addiction had to be kicked. Dreiberg was ready for it, had stockpiled anticonvulsives, adrenalin jabs, and sedatives…

…all in his basement workspace, where Kovacs was most likely to exceed his bandwidth.

Hell.

It just figured! The bastard was inconsiderate to the core, deep down to the timing of every involuntary brain stem twitch – he’d have to dump this in Dreiberg’s lap when he had no medical tools to hand, not even that damn syrupy sludge he subsisted on like an overgrown butterfly! Without pharmaceuticals, he was left with, what? Loosen clothes. Prevent choking. Sacrifice a virgin datachip to Baron Samedi and hope for the best.

Dreiberg felt his foot sink slowly into the carpet and spring back up in slo-mo, watched Kovacs waver like seaweed in a sluggish tide, and thought of the Russian death trap, of the damage he’d refused to let either of his partners check for.

Dreiberg yanked the visor off his eyes and, as the world slammed back up to speed, tugged Kovacs to the centre of the bed, away from the wall and the sharp edge of the splintery bedside table. The man rolled away from him and, wrapping his arms around his middle, curled into a defensive ball. Guilt stabbed through Dreiberg as the stillness of cyberspace fell away.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, laying his palm flat on the other man’s jittering back. The guy was his _partner_. They were supposed to watch each other’s asses. Dreiberg should have pushed him into detoxing when it was still safe, should at least have watched for the rhythms of use and need as closely as he monitored Kovacs for the first blips of 5SB-induced dementia, should have gone out for some goddamn stims himself before they settled in to work…shoulda, coulda, woulda, and none of it meant a damn thing if he was about to spend the next few hours coming up with the most respectful way to secretly dispose of the man’s habit-ravaged corpse.

No. No. It wasn’t going to end like that. “I’m here buddy, hang on!” 

Deal with the choking, first. He’d seen enough holos to know you had to wedge something in their teeth, and whipped off his belt. The end snapped his thigh as it came free from the final loop, but he barely felt it. He took hold of Kovacs’ jaw and tried to force the thick synthetic leather between his clenched teeth.

Kovacs thrashed, opened his mouth to drag in air, and squeaked when Dreiberg jammed his belt in the gap. He spat it out, gasping, “Wha’ are you – unf…”

He rolled onto his side, hyperventilating.

Dreiberg touched his quaking shoulder, trying to squeeze furious comfort through four layers of shirt. “Just ride it out, good, good, it’ll be okay. You’re gonna be fine. I promise. Laurie will be back with your stims soon, and everything will be fine.”

He wasn’t even convincing himself.

“Miss Isham…” Kovacs groaned, burying his face in the covers.

“Wait, is it Laurie? Is she hurt? Can you tell me – no, should I just plug in and see for myself?”

“No! Unnnh…is safe…is…is…safe,” Kovacs choked out urgently. “Investigation…unneeded.”

* * *

Laurie grinned wolfishly as an indignant ! flashed in the corner of her eye, disappearing a millisecond later. Not a K, but certainly not a D, either. God, she really was brilliant.

Her skin glowed in infrared, the only bright spot in sight. Light erupted like orange neon as she tucked her hands under her jacket, exposing a sliver of stomach to the cold night. She felt wickedly unobserved, revelling in the luxury of solitude in the omnipresent grumble of the living Sprawl.

She snorted as the stray thought brought up a memory. “One of the last scripts Jon brought to me was a woman in a post-apocalyptic city that never ended, alternately languid and running for her life – wait for it – stark naked. That’s it, on a two-hour loop. He said it’d be avant-garde. Can you believe it?”

She slid her hands under the tight kevler-blend A-line. It reluctantly stretched just enough to accommodate slender, chilled fingers that were extra-careful not to twitch just the right way to accidentally shiv herself. The Mystic had been gleefully graphic about that danger, reminding her he did not and never would stock replacement clitorises. But she wasn’t thinking about caustic old men, or how Jon would run his hands along her sides to cup her breasts, absently rolling nipples like cigarette butts between his knuckles as if he’d forgotten what they were there for. She thought of hands that trembled with eagerness, instead, torn between exploring already exposed flesh or greedily seeking more. Fingers thin and rough as frayed wires or soft and deft, giving under the pressure of her own…

“Just once, I’d like a surprise – and not a ‘haha, if that’s the enhanced version, I’d hate to see the factory-original’ surprise. Like, a nice soft belly. Or, I dunno, freckles, or something.”

Laurie lingered on the scar below her breast, the only visible mark on a body that had endured hundreds of small surgeries. “An honest-to-god scar.”

That had hurt like hell, and it had been nothing – just the edge of a plasma whip, wielded by an amateur kidnapper with far more firepower than brains, who went down like a baggie of black market kidneys after a kick to the head. She’d left the Roche kid with her hysterical parents – missing a few toes and all childhood illusions, but alive – before indifferently patching herself up in a transport station bathroom. It was an ugly seam, real, and all hers. 

(Well, theirs, now.)

“Strip off his clothes, and find something like that, you know?”

The ancient brickwork caught on her hair as she squirmed, rapidly warming fingers and soft vibration teasing flesh battenberged by her protective vest, and she turned to feel the roughness on her cheek. She thought of unfashionable stubble, of sandbagged eyes and the sharp tang of exhausted synapses over strong coffee. 

“Something real.”

The cursor flickered now, far too rapidly for mere blinks. Laurie smiled, picturing a mad, uncoordinated dash for the bathroom, good old Dan probably hovering like a hummingbird outside the door and offering inappropriately detailed digestive advice. She knew her boys a little too well.

Her skin was smooth, even the pores only showing now after months of neglect. There were no follicles left below her eyebrows and the back of her neck, and she really felt the lack in the cold – but then, it was always sunny in California. There was no friction, only the contrast of temperature marking her fingers’ drag down rapidly warming skin. She tapped the crescents to a higher setting.

* * *

Dreiberg struggled to pull Kovacs closer, feeling his unbelted trousers begin to slide down his hips. He’d failed at jamming something between the clenched teeth, but if Kovacs was talking with it, he probably wasn’t about to swallow his tongue, right? Clothes, then. They were supposed to be loose. Hell with that, they were coming _off_. Dreiberg was going to see what mess was secreted under them while he had the chance.

He managed to wrench off both jackets before Kovacs began to resist. He grabbed both wrists in one hand, trapping them by yanking one of the shirts below up over his head and tangling it around the arms. His revealed elbows were blotchy, red and white patches like half-sucked peppermint candy.

“Christ, you’re burning up!” _And I’ve got a metric ton of this wild new drug called aspirin at home that could bring the fever down. Dammit, Kovacs…_ “You’re going in the tub. I’ll get ice. Can this stuff all be submerged? No, of course it can, it’s got to be designed to take sweat and bathing and, and rain, right?”

Kovacs didn’t answer, only squeaked as he squirmed against his makeshift binds. Dreiberg managed to grab another layer as he rolled onto his stomach and tugged it up over the other shirt as reinforcement. He rolled out of the way of a blind kick, trying to count the layers remaining. 

“V-A’s security core doesn’t have this many strata!” he groused. He took hold of the remaining shirts and with one knee braced against Kovacs’ back heaved the entire tangle off the other man’s arms. Kovacs’ movements were more controlled now – if focused on hurting Dreiberg – so Dreiberg guessed he must be past the worst of it. Could he be trusted to get himself into a cold bath without drowning while Dreiberg hunted up a functional ice machine?

“Can – ” he began, trailing off as he took in the fleshless back, the knotted tracks of scar tissue where wires were laid and re-laid, at least one of them diving deep to where the heart would rest. There were generations of stim punches, the skin silvery necrotic over partially collapsed veins. Kovacs twitched and covered the visible part of his face as if he could feel the weight of Dreiberg’s eyes, lips moving like a landed fish’s.

“I’m – I’m going to get you a big, nutritious steak. Somehow. And ice. And – get in the tub, okay?”

The answer was a spastic grab for his lapels before he could move away. Dreiberg was yanked close with surprising strength, feeling threads snap all around his collar before something cold and smooth jammed itself under his chin.

_Oh God_ , he thought, picturing sweaty smears on the precious laminate face, _he’s going to kill me for that_ , because he was not feeling wet gulping breaths dampening his neck or the jackrabbit pulse where the other man’s lumpy wrist pressed into his jaw. He felt the whispered words through his pores.

“Don’t…leave me alone…with this. With _her_.”

* * *

“Feels good…” Laurie groaned quietly. “Tell me this feels good.”

The cursor paused.

Laurie forced herself to pause as well. “Tell me, or I’ll stop,” _no I won’t_ “cross my heart,” _I really really do not want to stop_ “but doesn’t this feel…just…wonderful?”

_Answer me, dammit!_

She waited, not patiently.

k.

It blipped out of existence almost as soon as it registered. Relieved, Laurie snickered, trying and failing to picture the look on his face as his inherent honesty forced the answer out of him.

Enough teasing. Laurie ached, shivering at the pulse of blood through her veins. She forgot the lingering sense memory of Jon’s absent-minded hands, missed the scamper of a three-toed Sprawl rat across her boot, disregarded the saint-like altruism of the entire effort and – almost – her silent passenger who in a few minutes would be composing binary trochees of gratitude. Wrist popping, she arched against her fingers, panting and light-headed.

* * *

Dreiberg tried to feel appalled at the immediate upward quirk of his lips defiantly ignoring his partner’s panicked whimpers. But as he slipped a boldly comforting arm around the other man’s shoulders, the only thought trumpeting through his head was: _I win!_

What exactly he’d won, he wasn’t prepared to admit.

Kovacs’ hands roamed spastically, leaving finger-width imprints of heat where they found the gaps between buttons and hems. Dreiberg gulped, futilely trying to hold onto his trousers, four flailing limbs, and keep himself upright all at once. Stick-thin fingers found and clung to the spare tire around his waist like a life preserver bobbing in shark-infested waters. 

“Ow…what can I do?” Dan asked, trying to squirm free of the painful grip.

“Laurel,” Kovacs grunted through clenched teeth, whipping his head from side to side.

Neural feedback, overstretched bandwidth, or the horrifically icky sensation of walking around with girl parts? None of them really explained the moan bubbling up from the back of the other man’s throat. Still, any excuse to drive a wedge into their surreal cuddliness was good enough for Dreiberg. “Okay, just, be still a second! I’m killing the link.” 

Dreiberg reached for the remote connection in Kovacs’ neck.

Kovacs grabbed his wrist tight enough to grind the bones together.

* * *

…almost there…almost there…she bit her lip, barely feeling the pain of her swelling jaw, fingers moving furiously as her vision flicked from infrared to ultraviolet with her eyelids’ fluttering…

* * *

“Don’t…touch,” Kovacs growled in his shoulder.

Dreiberg snarled soundlessly at the diversion and shifted gears into Plan B, automatically finding the VR helmet behind a pillow and setting it into the divots at his temples. The babble of meat-thought ceased as he found the protected data stream between his partners and savagely attacked it without a pause to establish his vitals.

He focused on a random thread, wearing it into a weak spot, and as it snapped to allow him entrance hoped he wasn’t about to be dropped into a seriously unpleasant sensation.

Whatever god answered his prayer had a mean sense of humor.

* * *  
 _…suffocating blankets of skin, two crusts of filth moving into crosshatching, can see her face, my face, moving inside tenticular mass of limbs, appropriated from a wholesome moment and grafted into this contextless sin. Lips wrenched into rictus of grim gratification, no reference for this expression across entire catalogue, no reference at all._

_Anchored in knit and tweed, in hairy skin – not mine, not hers, blessedly returning no sensation – hands safely locked down, not the hands already down where they **could not** be. Safe in the despised meat world, disciplined and still, retreating from clean haven-turned-hades. Burrow deeper, familiar scent underneath overlay of Veidt’s contaminating luxuries, smelling right and miraculously under lips, tasting wetly of copper and good intentions._

_Hands drifting down…no, thick rod of heat pounds untouched, shamefully hidden still but demanding – fingers touch instead opposite but equally demanding maw, slick and voraciously welcoming, tugging me to open up, drive forward – mercifully, agonisingly held in place –_

I’m in! I’m here for you, budd – oh, dear God! Wha – the hell, Kovacs?

_Would freeze, shrivel to nothing if rocking body allowed –_

Is **this** what you two have been up to? Oh…oh, Jesus…

_Ignore outrage. Pull closer. Not alone. Not alone._

Why the **hell** are you narrating– 

_Bearable now. Two sets of skin too many, three just enough. Too many clothes._

Hands! Hands in…places…oh, fuck, that, I didn’t know you could enhance that…

_Enveloped now, Daniel under hands, in head, safely between – so sorry, didn’t mean for –_

I know, I think, calm down, man, do you feel that?

_Feel – yes – didn’t mean to – didn’t encourage – going to lose –_

Yeah, okay, so this is Laurie’s – oh God, feel **that** – idea, sure – why, I don’t know, but – 

_Irritating presumptuous attitude, indulgent smile and dinner shelter approval, no choice but to think of you – like this – always in mind –_

Jesus.

_/post_

* * *

Dreiberg ripped himself back out of the conduit, heart pounding in his throat as his body pathetically tried to catch up to his partners in mere seconds. He swallowed, hard, until his stomach settled back into place, trying to slow his thoughts, to push back the conversation that had taken barely a second of real time, and the accidental info dump from the back recesses of Kovacs’ hard drives. It should have been hilarious, _was_ hilarious, and Dreiberg promised himself that, when the toxic awkwardness of this evening had worn off several decades hence, Kovacs’ _megabytes_ of hoarded Laurie Isham porn would be the subject of merciless teasing. 

He filed it haphazardly, hoping Laurie had no reason to look through his system before he got it secured away behind about a million passwords. Laurie…somewhere, she was having herself an unexpectedly awesome fun time, but here…

Kovacs gasped against Dreiberg’s chest, vibrating with tension. His face was wet, streaked with sweat. Dreiberg instinctively responded, shucking what was left of his shirts and tilting Kovacs’ head up to the light, knowing even this surreal gesture was expected. He couldn’t help but eagerly fulfil a request.

He was tempted to link back in, unbearably curious what Laurie was doing – and, for God’s sake, where the hell she was doing it – but genuinely feared it could kill him. He lingered instead outside their connection, satisfied for the moment as their third wheel, imagining the coolness of cyberspace soothing his poor racing body. He watched himself like a voyeur, slowly, predatorily swooping down to force a kiss on the gasping mouth beneath his.

* * *

…and it was all too easy to imagine some ridiculous alternate world where K hadn’t made like a rat for a bolt-hole at the first sign of trouble, one where she had the amusement – no, the pleasure, may as well admit it wouldn’t be purely hilarious to watch the two of them finally work out that partner-y tension. Just grab the bull by the horn – ha ha! K, driven mad with lust, finally tackling Dan to the ground and burying his face between baby-soft thighs…

Jesus, that’s a holo _she_ ’d pay good money for…

* * *

Kovacs froze beneath him for a momentary eternity, a picture of horrified uncertainty. Dreiberg instinctively tapped out a message on the frequency they used during tandem burns, _it’s ok, c’mere_. Kovacs’ last reserves of resistance crumbled under this most intimate onslaught, and with a small cry he jerked forward to return the unfamiliar caress.

One hairline laminate crack and a bruised cheekbone later, he successfully located Dreiberg’s mouth and, as Laurie reached the apex of a lazy figure-8 motion around her aching clitoris, bit his own tongue.

“Do we have to revisit the belt idea?” Dreiberg murmured, committing the frustrated, desperate noises his partner made as he ran his bleeding tongue along his cracked lips to his securest storage server. “No, okay, here – ”

He pried Kovacs’ hands from his waist and put them on the aluminate bed frame behind his head. “Hold,” he ordered.

The frame immediately creaked under the strain.

Dreiberg tugged pants from the heaving body that practically steamed in the chilly motel atmosphere, thankful to find only three layers and thick-soled boots that slid right off. His own, already sagging down his thighs, immediately followed and he pressed his heavy body down onto the small furnace below, unmindful of anyone’s need to breathe. His fingertips found thin cables – automatically tracking them to the joints where they dove into flesh – irregular patches of fine, wiry hair, and then protruding hip bones. He took hold of these, ignoring – for now – the stingy array of tissue surrounding them and pulled their bodies flush.

Kovacs mewled, simultaneously bunched and unspooling like jammed analogue tape. Dreiberg leisurely counted his heartbeats while the meat puppet made a heroic effort to catch up, almost instantly rigged up and ready to jack in. He shifted so he could take both of them in hand, already slick with sweat, and ground forward into his grip. Kovacs’ knees caught in the movement of his thighs and rose to lock around his waist.

Too quickly, far too quickly, Kovacs shuddered and came, jaw clenched so tightly Dreiberg wouldn’t have been surprised to hear enamel cracking. He gave into temptation and peeked back in, for just a moment, long enough to catch the edge of _Jesus, K, you feel_ that _?_

Suddenly grinding his own teeth – _yes, Laurie, remember, you hadn’t deluded yourself that_ you _inspired this, for either of them?_ – he reversed his attention to listen for a response and found instead the vacant blur of a snow crash.

For the first time in their partnership, Kovacs was offline.

Dreiberg violently shook his head, dislodging his helmet. It bounced in an organic dribble on his partner’s stomach and rolled toward the door, shedding components. Dreiberg couldn’t bring himself to care (much), quickly checking for a pulse and huffing a sigh of relief as the throat muscles moved under his fingers.

He gently pulled the white-knuckled hands away from the bed frame, carefully manoeuvring limbs that felt thick and overreaching, and jumped when those hands hesitated, then settled back on his hips.

“You – you haven’t – ” 

His rusty voice cracked, and Kovacs shrugged rather than complete the thought. He tentatively fingered the ridges left by elastic as if they were an impassable barrier south.

His laminate was darkly translucent without its perpetual backlit projection. Dreiberg caught movement behind the smeared plastic, a dark fringe of eyelashes twitching as Kovacs intently studied his expression. Dreiberg wanted to flip it up for a better look but held back, inordinately pleased with the revelation that there were, in fact, actual eyes under there, whatever their color.

Instead he guided the faltering hand past the forbidden perimeter and wrapped it around his grateful erection. He expected he’d have to drag Kovacs every step of the way – hell, he was still waiting for an outraged neural blast to the cranium, even though his partner had started this and wasn’t even online. It was more than a little terrifying that, instead, his partner tentatively tried out several grips and, when Dreiberg squeaked at the light drag of a fingernail just past his circumcision scar, quickly gained the confidence to work him like a pro. He wondered where in the hell his pleasure-spurning pietist had picked that up. He wondered if Adrian’s assassins were using their time more wisely and already had another strike burrowing toward them. He wondered if Laurie was going to murder him for muscling into their twisted…relationship…thing. He wondered why Kovacs weakly moaned _Daniel_ into his neck as Dreiberg’s spine began to spark up from base to dataport…

…and abandoned all thought as he tardily followed his partners into the blue screen of death.


	10. Chapter 10

Adrian flicked off the wall of monitors one by one, pausing over the final two cctv feeds as, several floors below, the Los Angeles and Beijing shifts trickled through security in opposite directions. He rubbed the crease in his forehead and silently groused that while no Veidt-Ashpool scion worth the name would be plagued by something so plebeian as a headache, there was nevertheless a certain pressure threatening to forcibly eject his eyeballs from their sockets.

More irritating was the gut certainty he was missing something obvious, something important, in the confluence of elements in front of him. For the moment, he was obeying his security detail’s polite demand he keep his precious lobes offline, but as he so rarely leaned on the crutch of cyberspace’s refined datastream, that was no handicap. Nor was he concerned about the ongoing investigation into his would-be assassin, having delegated that tiresome task well. Dreiberg would do as Adrian expected; that much he could count on, at least, in an increasingly deranged world.

Perhaps he was hungry.

Adrian rang for dinner to be sent up to his office, impulsively requesting a selection for two, and made his way back to his personal suite. He tapped his thumb on the dataports he passed without consciously registering the gestures.

Going past the sumptuous show apartment profiled in so many media outlets, Adrian stepped into the much smaller area where he spent his limited personal time. The security arch surrounding the open doorway didn’t spark ominously as he passed through to indicate that it would immediately incinerate visitors other than Adrian and his permanent houseguest. The only noise was a polite ‘blip!’ marking his safe passage.

The vigilante known as ‘Veidt’ had been a notorious undercover ace, particularly relishing the classic infiltration-via-menial-staff shtick when he could just as easily access mainframes remotely. He’d smugly insist to his subterranean colleagues that there was a certain uncompromising style to breaking open big juicy targets from their top dog’s personal terminal.

For the head of the world’s most powerful corporate family, cleaning up after himself was a small price to pay for true security.

He found Byron in the gym, following the echoes of a husky, cracking voice.

“Sailing over a cardboard sea…hanging over a muslin tree…you’re a melody played in a penny arcade…”

Byron floated energetically among a flurry of bubbles, having (Adrian noted with indulgent amusement) dragged a large inner tube from the pool to the Jacuzzi. Dark, brittle hair clung to his scarred neck, nearly hiding the pitted souvenir of a Yakuza enforcer’s wrist fletcher. The broken old man’s swimsuit was tented at the crotch, but Byron seemed indifferent to his lively body. He tapped languidly on the facial screen of his vintage VR helmet instead, its power pack carelessly perched on the puddled tiles.

Adrian toed off his shoes and dipped his feet in the bubbles, turning Byron around to face him. “Hello, By.”

Byron took no notice.

Adrian tapped his knobby knee.

The old man grunted, still fingering whatever data held his attention.

“How are you?”

“Hmm.”

“Have you eaten today?”

“Unh.”

“I’m having a late dinner. Come join me.”

Byron nodded, possibly even at something Adrian had said.

Adrian guessed that they might be third cousins, as the nearly extinct Lewis legacy originally sprang from a poorly-regarded Ashpool daughter. But generations were damnably complicated (and there was only so much unique genetic material, spread very thin) among the old families. They shared a blood type, a slightly overactive thyroid gland, an inconvenient allergy to latex, and a few crucial junctures of deoxyribonucleic proteins that made Byron not only his familial responsibility but a very useful fellow.

“You’ll be sixty next month, you know. We should plan something special, to celebrate.”

Adrian spun the inner tube until he was looking at the back of Byron’s head and readied a miniscule sterile pouch. From the shunt above the main neckjack, Adrian drew a few millilitres of spinal fluid.

“Sixty what?” Byron asked.

“Years. Old.” Adrian tucked the sample away and patted Byron’s shoulder.

“Dinner will be informal tonight,” he said. “But please do wear some trousers this time.”

Back in his office, Adrian ran the usual analysis on the sample, pleased with the results. The old man had been floating on his last microdose for several days with no evidence of physical deterioration or further dementia. Adrian saved the data to his private server, one so tightly encrypted and camouflaged even a Dreiberg or a Blake would have trouble cracking it. He calculated the appropriate dosage for a much younger, healthier male and opened the labelled aspirin bottle in his unlocked desk door, crushing and inhaling a pill with practiced ease.

Byron drifted in a few minutes later behind the disconcerted catering staff, clanking in his chelated encounter suit. Adrian nodded his approval. The servers quickly spread his favourite meze selection (across the same table Dreiberg had this morning wolfed down enough food for three), the small dishes artfully surrounding a silver pot of Turkish coffee.

“Sir?” asked the man in charge, flipping over one of the two cups. He was a small, round man – Ramon, Adrian’s memory supplied, survivor of the South Bronx foster system and recipient of a Veidt-Ashpool merit scholarship, now a fanatically loyal culinary genius with a special talent for black market sourcing. Another very useful man.

Adrian waved him off, pouring his own coffee.

“Sir?” Ramon turned to Byron, asking as politely as if the old man were unfolding his napkin, rather than slurping strained yogurt directly from the serving dish.

“Mmm, uh-huh.”

Ramon added three sugars and carefully placed the cup of strong coffee where it was least likely to be glanced by a wayward elbow. Adrian offered Ramon a slight smile as the man literally bowed out, herding his spooked underlings.

Adrian tapped his transparent mug, watching the dregs settle at the edge of the glass. With a sigh, he sternly told himself to stop stalling and chose a stuffed pepper, making himself chew it without first sniffing and to notice only the delicate seasoning of the rice inside. There would be no faint trace of bitter almonds, not when a lazy assassin could pick from many synthetic toxins that had no taste, or microscopic chips of time-release crack sealant, or even (for that touch of _haute technologie_ ) custom-built nanobots that slip through the stomach lining and into the bloodstream.

His father had always been slightly neurotic, or so Adrian had been told, becoming fixated on the oddest things. Invisible cracks in the floors, noiseless insects hovering above his bed…internal torments to distract him from the terrifying real work of maintaining a fiscal empire. 

Adrian was not about to let that weakness take hold in himself. He had to eat three times a day. Any scrap of nutrient that came near him had been checked and re-checked dozens of times, right up until it was set before him.

He did not smell bitter almond. He did not feel on his teeth the musical scrape of ground glass in his coffee grinds.

He did not.

“There was an attempt on my life today,” he said, forcing himself to swallow first.

“Oh?” Byron chewed a stubborn bite of squid with focused determination, washing it back with a gulp of scalding coffee.

“It failed,” Adrian reassured him.

“Oh. Good.”

Adrian grimly made his way through several feta-stuffed olives, thinking of the canned food that was the only sustenance on his family’s orbiting satellite retreat. What heaven it would be to make his own meals – open package, heat up, voila! In his sight through the entire process, only touched by his hands.

“Fortunately, the attempt didn’t expose our work,” he continued.

That finally got Byron’s attention. He slopped coffee over the rim of his cup. “Good?”

Adrian sighed. “Yes, very good.”

Quiet, he needed quiet. He’d put out the highest-level fires, the emergency fixes only he could talk the shareholders board into approving, and the rest were in capable hands. Adrian wanted to be far away from those capable hands, particularly disapproving old friends who existed in a luxuriously small part of the world that Adrian was forced to consider. He needed the space now to work on what only he and Byron could do, and he had a nagging feeling time was running short.

“Good for everyone?” Byron pushed his faceplate back and pinned Adrian with a bloodshot green-eyed gaze.

Adrian touched the back of his free hand, wincing at the icy skin. “We’re going to save the world. You know that.”

He gently chafed the hand between his own, trying to restore some circulation. Byron’s attention was already drifting, Adrian could tell, but he fought it. 

“Not the whole world,” he managed.

“No,” Adrian agreed quietly. “No, it will hurt some, hurt them very much. I’ve thought about it, about them, every soul who could possibly be affected. It’s still worth it. To put everyone on the same level, to give everyone the same access, the same chance…some people are going to have to trade everything for that, for the world’s future, and they won’t choose to do so on their own. It’s worth it, isn’t it, if no talented techs have to waste their brief lives as vigilantes any more?”

Adrian squeezed his hand, wondering if this was one of the days Byron remembered his youth of tilting at windmills. “No more schoolboy heroics, just to claw unexpected little islands of safety out of our insane leaders’ claws?”

Byron pulled his hand away and dipped toasted rye into hummus.

Perspective. That was all Adrian needed. And the best place to get perspective on the world…

“What do you think about a trip to through upper atmosphere, hmm? I could use a break from the Sprawl, and my security force would be happier with me tucked away for a week or two. We could get some real work done, possibly even finalise the –”

Byron interrupted him by tapping impatiently on his plated chest, mouth bulging with warm bread.

Byron’s encounter suit was an early R&D prototype as well as his preferred leisurewear, diffusely transmitting data and virtual sensation to nerve points throughout the body. Few jockeys could take the dual cerebral pressures of an activated spinal cord jack and the weightlessness of space – Adrian suspected the lunatic Kovacs would find his spiritual home among that riot of conflicting sensation – but an encounter suit’s input actually soothed a discombobulated inner ear by partially mimicking the sensation of gravity.

It was a brilliant piece of equipment with, sadly, a consumer market of perhaps a couple dozen space cadets. Outside of a lucrative one-time contract, they’d shelved the line.

“Ah, I see. You’re all prepared, then.” Adrian sipped his coffee, savoring the gritty bitterness. He flicked his monitors back on, ignoring Byron’s flinch at the sudden wash of stimulation, and let his eyes drift out of focus.

He wouldn’t lie to himself that it didn’t sting. His closest living relative was a pickled wreck who couldn’t reliably name what planet he was on but still consistently managed to elliptically stagger a few steps ahead of this world’s smartest man. Perhaps he was only a credit to the resiliency of their gene pool.

Or else there was simply no way to truly enjoy the benefits of 5-SB poisoning without surrendering oneself to the addiction first, flinging away all connection to the rest of humanity.

Adrian’s stomach growled, blithely free of neuroses and envy.

Byron shook his head, mouth suddenly pursed with disapproval. 

“Someone must have a talk with Sally, a very frank discussion,” he declared, startling Adrian. “This sort of behaviour is wild and downright mortiferous, and no good will come of it. Mark my words.”

Adrian cleared his throat uncomfortably. It was part of Byron’s disability that he couldn’t help but keep a too-close watch on those he loved, and a testament to the old white hat’s skills that his deft infiltration was rarely suspected, or his targets’ behaviour thus adjusted to something suitable for observation. Adrian had no desire to have images of whatever “mortiferous” Holoworld peccadilloes Sally might indulge in haunting his nightmares.

And yet, the name tugged something in the blind catalogues of his basal ganglia. Was there a big one lurking in those deep waters, and was this the right bait to bring it to the surface? He decided to push Byron’s rare flash of coherency.

“What’s happening with Miss Isham? Is she going to be in danger?”

Byron nodded, weakly thumping the table. “She may be growing into quite the little star, but she’s still a child, Adrian – you know I’ve had my, my battles, my bad calls out on the streets. I’m no angel, and no prude, either, but, but…she’s a minor, not a Barrymore!”

Adrian paused, then hazarded a guess as he began to see the shape of whatever node Byron held so carelessly. “Laurie?”

“Of course Laurie!” Byron huffed. “Sally’s letting her run wild. She’s too young to be living up to her mother’s example.”

“Laurie’s not a child,” Adrian replied slowly, stalling for time and wanting to keep Byron’s focus while the whale of a node drifted into reach. “She’s nearly thirty. I’d doubt that Sally has any – ”

“Thirty?” Byron snorted. “If Sally’s little girl was thirty, I’d be, what, sixty? Hah.”

Adrian’s lips twisted into a snarl of triumph, gaze flickering across his monitors. He went to one and rewound the cctv footage, sure he’d seen the crux of the oncoming collision.

“Here?” he asked Byron, wanting to be sure.

“Hmm?” Byron squinted. “Uh huh.”

The wake of the node’s passage slammed through Adrian’s thought processes, clearing away the drek. It left orderly ripples behind, a dozen potential paths that all went into motion with one action.

“Excuse me, dear By, but there’s an urgent call I must make to the authorities. Please finish dinner without me.”

“Call Sally!” Byron insisted, but feebly. His face began to twist in confusion as the door closed and locked behind Adrian. 

“Sally?” he asked the empty room. “Eddie?”

Byron shoved away from the table and moved to the thick window, watching the scrum of neon threads flowing to the horizon. 

“Yeah, Eddie. I’m on it.”


	11. Chapter 11

_”No awkward pillow talk. I’ve decided I like that in a man. Beats leaving a holo-resume on the bedside table.”_

_Laurie levered her ass out of whatever ominously crunchy alley substance she’d slumped into and rearranged her clothes. “I didn’t literally knock you dead. Right?”_

_When no reply came, she jumped to catch the edge of a disused windowsill (the window itself cinderblocked up decades before) and climbed up the face of the building carefully, jamming fingers and toes into mortarless cracks. She perched on a decorative spout near the roof and worriedly contemplated the hazy firmament below._

_“I could have sworn you were offline for a minute there, ha ha. You, right?”_

Dreiberg shivered at the phantasm of cold water sluicing down his rapidly cooling body, barely feeling the clammy sheets tangled around his legs as he clung to the mattress. He squeezed his eyes shut, uselessly, as Laurie impatiently rocked back on her heels over fourteen stories of dead space.

_”I think this has potential,” she murmured. “If you could dampen my signal a bit more and allow actual two-way conversation – think how useful it would be when I’m on recon, if you could say ‘go get a good peep at that monitor third from the bottom’ rather than enhancing it a thousand times from the very corner of my recording. And we have to get Dan in here somehow. He’d die of geekout.”_

Dreiberg flinched. _Can we tell her I already am?_

Phantom shudder, unrelated to the motel’s icy shower. _No._

_I…er…we really should._

_No._ Warm bloody smell of metal against flushed skin. _Why are you? After…_

_Because I left a weak spot in your formerly secure connection, and anyone could use it to patch in if I don’t, um, monitor the situation._

Dreiberg located his crumpled trousers under the blanket and carefully slid them on with a minimum of movement. He found his explanation more convincing if he was wearing pants. He wasn’t trespassing, after all – Laurie wanted him in on it. Whatever “it” was. “It” had led to him not wearing pants, at least, and the pleasantly sensitive feeling between his legs and the unpleasantly sticky state of the sheet beneath them; Dreiberg was sure of that much.

He was also sure that, whatever this mess the two of them had started, he was well mired in the middle of it. That was almost enough to put him in a good mood despite it all.

_“Am I babbling to myself? Hello?” Laurie picked at rust flakes on the spout, stretching to reach a particularly large patch on the edge. “So, either you’re dead, and the cursor’s only back because your hardware rebooted…or you’re sulking.”_

_She crossed the roof and peered into the empty alley on the other side. “For no reason! For a virtual experience like that, any other guy would be forking over his life savings in a –”_

The wordless growl that provoked made the bathroom door rumble. Dreiberg felt the blood drain from his face and heart simultaneously lurch and pound. No, actually…neither of those were his reactions. And both of his partners had momentarily frozen, so…

He took advantage of the ceasefire in the war to control his inner ear and sat up, rescuing his clothes from the room’s sqidgy carpet.

_Can we both just forget I said that?”_

_D_

_“I knew you weren’t dead, you faker.”_

Dreiberg disconnected his helmet and surveyed his options, unexpectedly lonely in only his own body. The shirt and sweater vest were a mess of popped seams and warped knit. Conscious of the goosebumps breaking out under a greasy film of sweat – and the too-soft hills of flesh beneath them – he pawed through the other pile and chose the largest and least Kovacs-smelling of his partner’s shirts to stretch thinly around his girth. Dreiberg squinted at the cracked and faded decal (which illustrated a vampire on a dinosaur leading an army of zombies and flying saucers), and wondered for the thousandth time where his perpetually broke partner obtained such classy retro clothing.

_”C’mon, didn’t that just blow out the cobwebs, let you goddamn_ think _again? I know I feel more human.”_

Dreiberg reconnected his VR helmet and dropped in deep before Laurie had finished speaking, “human” becoming a slow drone mid-syllable, and drew close to watch the frenetic hustle betraying Kovacs’ ambivalence. Dreiberg was tempted to agree with her, in that (assuming he got an explanation within the next 10 seconds) he no longer felt like slamming both of them in a slowly collapsing killfile and deleting the decryption sequence. Kovacs, on the other hand…

Kovacs was pulling files from his super-secret log and deleting them, restoring them, backing them up, deleting both copies, restoring both, doubling and tripling the encryption on the entire log, and finally quarantining the lot on the hard drive in his palm, fastidiously updating the log’s action documentation with each change. It made Dreiberg’s brain hurt, and almost unbearably tempted to make a grab for the offending files each time they popped from place to place, momentarily open to anyone with the reflexes of a stimmed hummingbird.

He interrupted before the challenge grew too appealing. _You know that if you actually need to capture a virus, you’ll corrupt those entries, right?_

Kovacs froze, then sealed the quarantine with fussy care. _Better off destroyed._

_Then why don’t you?_

_Happened._ Kovacs’ image struggled for cohesion, tendrils of data corrupting into grey threads, then dissipating. _Omission would render record inaccurate. False._

_Right_ , Dreiberg responded, nonplussed, and mentally filed that under “partner’s weird compulsions (category B: ignore).” _So, uh, you’re rocking back and forth in the shower, and Laurie’s protesting a little too much about consent, and, er, I…got involved…and…a little help here?_

Kovacs’s image blurred and sharpened, the cyberspace equivalent of fidgeting. _Should not have come online like this. Distracted. Dangerous._

_Should I be, uh, defending your lost honor?_ Dreiberg persisted. _I don’t think I have a chance with pistols at dawn, but I could put every pair of underwear she owns up for auction on the Idoru exchange. Or invite her mother for a nice long visit. Say the word._

_Ridiculous!_ Kovacs snapped back, to his relief. _Was effort to fix…perceived damage. Misguided, not malicious. Attempting to establish…friendship. Should not have allowed her to –_

_She threw you a virtual pity bone?_ Dreiberg blurted out, shocked amusement overcoming his projection filter.

Kovacs’ image imploded like a startled jellyfish.

_Joke! Really! I didn’t think that!_ Dreiberg insisted, mentally crossing his fingers. 

His partner paused. _Did. Had not considered…_

_You know Laurie doesn’t have pity, on anyone!_ Dreiberg drew closer, trying to block any retreat. _How many people in this world does she consider worthy of friendship, let alone trying to help? It’s a compliment. Really! A very…personal…compliment._

_Hurm._

_Let’s all just forget it, okay?_

_Owe apology. Did not intend…_

Dreiberg felt his blush even through the frosty distance of cyberspace, and wondered if the cold shower was steaming off Kovacs’ unregarded meatbag.

_My partner needed help, so I helped_. Unlike Laurie, he could take pity on an antisocial weirdo leagues out of his depth. _It’s nothing you wouldn’t have done for me. We’ll never speak of it again._

Kovacs said nothing.

_It was nice, yes, I’m not going to lie_ , Dreiberg blundered on, the silence pressing on his nerves. Far away, Laurie was speaking again, mumbling as she chewed her lip.

_But I’ve never wanted, er, that, from you_ how could he be attracted to, fundamentally, an unreadable mask, a frown, and the perpetual funk of overstressed aluminium _if I want anything, it’s to get you off that junk and a few solid meals down your throat, and, hell, just keep you from falling apart._

He groaned to himself, _…and otherwise be the girl just like dear old mom. Damn it._

_Always were mother hen_ , his partner projected stiffly.

_I…er…you heard that?_

_Too distracted. Shouldn’t be here. Announcing presence to entire quadrant._

_I’m going, I’m going…_

_Daniel…_ Kovacs hesitated, then continued softly. _Good to see you as yourself, again._

_What…_ Dreiberg flipped his awareness outward and looked back at himself – a trick that that the human brain would only tolerate for a few bewildered seconds before reverting to a brain-centred point of view – and felt like cheering. _I rebooted!_ he grinned, and flexed his virtual arms, back to their previous, if not glory, acceptability. _And even taller!_

Dreiberg could have sworn he heard a snort as his awareness snapped back into his “eyes” and he retreated closer to the meat world, returning to a more human passage of time.

_“ – implies agreement,” Laurie was saying. “In fact, you should remain entirely silent if you agree that Adrian’s got the best ass this side of Holowood, and factory-original, too!”_

_D_

_“There’s that positive attitude! Are you – ”_

_G_

_“G? Go? Get my ass in gear?”_

_K_

_Softly, “We’re good?”_

_K_

_G_

_!_

_“Fine, Herr Commandante.” She jumped over the edge of the roof, caught a drain pipe with one hand, and began shimmying down to street level. “I’m coming in along Schneider Ave. Can you check the cctv feeds for anything more than usually irritating in my path?”_

_K_

The shower turned off, and Dreiberg was treated to the harsh rasp of the hotel’s brown paper towels across sensitised stim-punched skin. The motions were rough and perfunctory, fingers tightly curled to avoid as much epidermis-to-epidermis contact as possible. Dreiberg dropped out of the connection, hastily throwing a patch on the exit fissure, when he very nearly offered his partner a hand.

* * * 

Laurie surveyed the Mystic’s neighbourhood from her perch near the Luddite Heights. “Do you see what I see?” she murmured. “Specifically, what I don’t see?”

K

“Either the Devil’s had a rapture, or something’s cleared a pretty big path through these streets, right to the Mystic’s door.”

C

?

Laurie nodded. “Maybe those civicops came through this way, and all the roaches have scuttled under the rug. But the muscles that followed us before looked like pros, more likely to own cops than run from them.”

A

?

“And A is for…apple, of course. I had a real one once, did I ever tell you? A hydroponic Granny Smith, when I was shooting that edu-drama on the lunar – ”

D

“Right, right. A for…accelerate? No. Abort? Abort the mission?”

K

?

Laurie chewed her thumbnail, thinking of the carton of cigarettes she’d traded to that cabbie. She wondered if the Mystic would be willing to give her a pack on credit, or even a single cigarette. Maybe she could just stand real close to the leathery old man as he exhaled… “No. I know this area like you know Dan’s…pantry. Any funny business, and I can be gone in a flash.”

She slid down the bricks, her dragging boots and gloves making a noise like the planet’s longest zipper, dropping to the sidewalk in front of the Mystic’s door. She poked her code into the keypad of his announcer and waited impatiently for the door to open, keeping a weather eye on the empty street. It was never a good sign when the door took longer than a few seconds to open, at least without a reason like Kovacs at her side to make the Mystic play possum.

She told herself, not very convincingly, that he was simply holding a grudge about his blasted security door.

Finally, the secondary door unbolted itself, and her worst fears were confirmed. The Mystic was out, and he’d left his AI running to keep anyone interesting out of his inner sanctum.

A stuttering image of the old man bared his horse teeth at her. “What’s shakin’, sugar tits?”

Laurie rubbed the bridge of her nose and silently counted to ten. “Well, that answers one of my questions. Blake was here, and recently.”

In her opinion, and that of every sane person left on the planet, Greeting AIs were an abortion of technology, even worse than the street-corner imaging software that pasted her head onto porno stills all across the internet. They were beloved of managers too cheap to hire street-level security with minimal receptionist skills – the AIs, that was, although she wouldn’t rule out the homemade fleshware with those skinflints, either. 

The Mystic, as a one-man operation, used his to keep the slumming tourist rabble at bay and catch an occasional nap. The old man’s genius kept it more stable than most. It rarely returned end-line errors in conversation without reason and had only immediately triggered the security system’s sonic blast on her a handful of times.

“Got it in one, babe. Want a medal or the funbags to pin it on?”

But even the Mystic couldn’t program an AI not to learn. 

A static conversational system would only degrade under the relentless corrosion of human interaction, requiring 24/7 tech support. One designed to integrate the noise that assaulted its signal, however, could independently maintain cohesion for several days, or even weeks if the public treated it gently and refrained from knock-knock jokes. The downside was that AIs nearly always spoke in a grating melange of prepared speech and verbal graffiti.

“When was he here?”

“Fuck you,” the Mystic’s image replied pleasantly.

“Couldn’t have been very long ago,” she mused. “A few civil conversations would have flushed out your exciting new vocabulary words.”

“Bad command or file name,” it intoned.

“Right,” she said. “Question, then – and don’t give me any lip – ”

“Parameters accepted.”

“When was Edward Blake here?”

“First of October, 1:03 am.”

“That’s only six days ago. K, are you getting this?”

K

“Do you realise, he could have gone directly from here to his death?”

“Incorrect.”

“Incorrect?” She raised an eyebrow, surprised at the AI’s independence more than its helpfulness. “Do you know where he went from here?”

“Fuck you.”

“Oh, fuck yourself,” she snapped back.

“Bad command or file name,” it replied smugly. “Unable to comply with request.”

Laurie thumped the projector with a gloved fist, which only made the image waver and re-form. “K, is there anything I can do to make this bastard talk? Breaking fingers isn’t going to do it this time.”

K

After several minutes and one false start, she had the alphabet string of Kovacs’ open-sesame scribbled on her hand. “Listen up, buddy: interim boolprop testing cheats enabled yes.”

The image stood to attention. “Parameters accepted.”

“Well boo-freaking-yah.”

“Bad command or file name.”

“Of course it is. Try this on, then: admin debug fix-all interaction.”

“Running fix-all,” it replied. “Security subroutine cache cleared.”

“Which means?”

It grinned. “Do your worst, if you’re man enough.”

She nodded, satisfied. “It worked, K. This hacking game is kind of fun – it’s got nothing on kicking in some psycho katiehead’s face, but…unless you’ve got some magic words that can make this thing feel pain?”

D

“Life is no fair at all. Okay, listen up, you – answer my questions without any of this ‘fuck you’ crap, unless you want me to add a ‘divide by zero’ command to every imperative routine you’ve got.” 

K

_I give him the round-the-world of my naughty bits, and_ that’s _what impresses the little psychopath? Truly a banner day for my ego._

“Parameters accepted.”

“Confirm: Eddie Blake came to see the Mystic six days ago.”

“Correct, sugar– ”

“One more ‘sugar-tits’ and I’ll have Kovacs give you an Australian accent.”

“Updated parameters accepted.” Despite its obedient words, the image stuck its tongue out.

“Blake really left an impression on your interaction routines, didn’t he?”

“Fu – bad command or file name.”

Laurie shook her head, surprised at the beginning of tears stinging her re-routed tear ducts. “He was even a bad influence on non-sentient programs. Amazing. Absolutely amazing.”

K

“Shut it, fanboy.” She swallowed. “So Blake met with the Mystic on the first and – ”

“Incorrect.”

“Incorrect? You just stated – ”

“Blake intended to but never spoke to the man. That numbnuts was doolally with drink and thought he _was_ talking to the Mystic, who was upstairs snoring like an old deck drive the whole time.”

“He spoke to you instead?” Laurie snickered at the mental image. “He must have been pissed out of his gourd, the asshole.”

“Correct, on both points. We spoke for forty-six minutes and eight seconds.”

“That long? Actually, this is perfect! Let me just find a disk in all this junk you can download that conversation to, and I’ll be on my way.”

“No can do, honey-boobs.”

“What – you – you know what, forget the fucking niceties. I’ll pay the Mystic for the disk and the intel later, ok? He knows I’m good for it.”

“The data is classified.”

“Aaaaargh!” Laurie groaned. She paused and tried, hopefully: “Fix-all?”

“Running fix-all… Nada, maltose-mammaries.”

Laurie shuddered. “Those words are my father’s, you know. He was a letch, an assassin, and a bastard in every way possible, but he’d never have said those things about me.”

“Adjusted parameters accepted. Honey.”

“Better, I guess,” she sighed. “K? Can we break this?”

M

“Maybe?”

K

“First thing we do when I get home, the very first thing – we work on our communication. Hell may have frozen over, but I actually care what you have to say.”

The cursor blinked (sardonically this time, she thought).

“Okay, you – give me something. Tell me why my magic words aren’t working for this particular secret door.”

“That data is stored remotely.”

Laurie groaned. “So I need to wait for the Mystic after all, to get into his back files.”

“Incorrect. Data is not held in the Mystic’s domain.”

“Really? How is that possible?”

“Bad command or file name.”

“So I’m going about this the wrong way?”

“Correct.”

“And even the Mystic couldn’t drag this conversation out of you, if he were here?”

“Correct.”

“Is he even aware it happened?”

“No. I have not received his customary weekly maintenance.”

“That’s odd.”

“Indeed.”

“This means I finally know something before the Mystic, and about his own program! Oh, I’m going to enjoy rubbing that in his face.”

“Bad command or file name,” the image interjected. “Action not possible.”

“You’re a touchy little inanimate program, aren’t you?”

“No. Accurate to within one-tenth of a percentile.”

Laurie rubbed her temples, pretending she had a helmet digging into them and that her thought processes were those of a tweaked-out cowboy, illogical and paranoid. “If the Mystic doesn’t even know about the conversation, he couldn’t have been the one who moved and encrypted the record of it. Correct?”

“Correct.” 

“Someone else cracked the Mystic's security?”

“You are not the first interfacer to tamper with my parameters this week. Hell, I’ve had more fingers in me lately than a meatpuppet on blue light special.”

The image seemed smugly please at her gagging response.

!

“What?”

Kovacs laboriously sent another string of letters. 

“Locate encrypt true, remote match-all,” Laurie read out.

The image verbally vomited a series ID only a little shorter then pi.

“I hope you got all that,” Laurie said. “I’m not repeating it.”

K

“Good. Does it mean anything to you?”

V

A

“V, A…oh.” There was no one on the planet who would have trouble decoding that message. “V-A. Why’s Adrian’s company tied up in this – this was days before the attack on the company? Why would he be watching Blake, let alone snatching his data?”

“Bad blood between those two boys,” the image volunteered.

* * *

_Daniel – look at this!_

Kovacs sent Dreiberg the ID string their partner had coaxed out of the AI and finally emerged from the bathroom, skin rubbed as red as the freckles on his knuckles. He took the long way around Daniel, examining the pocked formwall, and frowned when he finally faced the other man.

_My shirt._

Dreiberg crossed his arms. _I was cold. And what the hell is going on – why has Adrian sent me to investigate something when he’s obviously miles ahead of us?_

_Could be a company spy._

_No. That’s a personal code. Hell, that’s his_ favourite _code – it’s the one he used in the Contra Libre burn, remember? It’s practically got racing stripes!_

_Don’t like this. Stinks of a set-up. Burn Veidt-Ashpool? Am ready now._

_Whoa, whoa…let’s not jump to that, not yet…or ever, unless we get extra suicidal some fine midnight._

_Clearly involved in Blake’s murder, Daniel._ Kovacs’ projection was needle-sharp, almost painful to receive.

“Will you sit down?” Dreiberg snapped. Kovacs twitched, but moved closer. He hesitated between the two beds, then deliberately settled in to his usual space, irritatingly close to Daniel, body language screaming “Everything Is Completely Normal And Always Has Been Now Shut Up.”

_It looks like he knows something, yes._ Dreiberg sent, trying to project calm. _Which we won’t find out by burning him, if we even could burn that monster without a small army. We’ll talk to him, and Sally. And Hollis. I’m going to see him first._

Kovacs nodded stiffly. _Will wait._

Dreiberg picked at the nap of the blanket.

Kovacs sat perfectly still, legs crossed so tightly the tendons hummed.

Dreiberg cleared his throat. _Off to Hollis, then._

_Yes._

“I’m so sorry I called you so unattractive you’d only get a pity fuck,” Dreiberg exclaimed. “I didn’t, okay, you know I meant it, but it was unfair. You have many other qualities that could, if properly considered, by someone, uh, considering, er – for instance, you’re very…loyal. I’ve always valued that.”

“Cease. Speaking.”

Just moving his head far enough to peek felt like a Sisyphean effort. Every muscle in Dreiberg’s body had clenched, possibly permanently. Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out the other man’s expression, one of white-lipped pain Kovacs had last made in the grip of an experimental neuroletic paralyser.

Dreiberg decided to obey the agonised request. 

“Do not…regret,” Kovacs said, forcing the words out.

“Great,” Dreiberg breathed.

“Will not…NOT…be repeating…experience.”

“Oh,” Dreiberg said, telling himself it was a relief. That saved him having to say it.

Kovacs slowly turned to examine Dreiberg, who molded his features into the expression of guileless approval he used on the rest of the meat world to keep his true nature under wraps.

He was almost disappointed when Kovacs nodded, obviously relieved.

“It wasn’t…all bad, though, right?”

He’d never been able to resist picking a scab until it bled, and scarred.

“Was,” Kovacs’ lips moved, trying and discarding several words. “Excessive.”

“It’s not usually like that,” Dreiberg hastened to assure him. “There’s only one set of sensory information, instead of a three-way crossfeed. It’s not so overwhelming, it’s just…”

He shrugged. “It’s nice. You shouldn’t rule it out. Of your life, I mean. Not with me. That – you can rule that out, sure.”

Kovacs sighed.

“I’m sorry,” Dreiberg mumbled. “Can I start over?”

“Am not made of meat, Daniel.” His fingers fluttered as if he were rapidly typing out commands, giving Dreiberg only a fraction of his concentration. But Dreiberg could easily make out the character strings, and they were only gibberish. “Am…thought. Deliberation, into action. Not spastic muscle, oozing effluvia, leaving trail of – ”

“Whoa, easy,” Dreiberg said, carefully touching his partner’s shoulder. Kovacs allowed the contact for a heartbeat before sliding out from under his hand. “I’m sorry. Laurie and I, we didn’t realise – if we had – ”

“Dreiberg…”

“Right. Ceasing speaking.”

Kovacs sighed impatiently. “Wish you could see, really see. Nodes coming together, coming apart, always in flux but always logical…eventually.”

“I, uh, I’d like that too. If it didn’t take a usually fatal drug addiction to achieve.” Dreiberg tried to smile at his weak joke.

Kovacs ignored the effort. “Where two had left one behind, now three threads are tangling together. Not impossible to unravel knot, but difficult. Very difficult. Thus…do not regret.”

“Huh. That’s almost a koan, you know?” Dreiberg chuckled uneasily. He wondered if it was the right time to bring up Kovacs’ secret Laurie Isham porn stash and lighten the mood.

“Hollis,” Kovacs reminded him. “Will monitor Miss Isham.”

* * *

“What bad blood?” Laurie asked the AI, intrigued.

“Bad command or – ”

“Don’t you even! ‘Bad blood’ was your term, light brite.”

“Term: ‘bad blood,’” it recited primly, “last used by Edward Blake on – ”

“Blake, huh? What did he have to say about it?”

“Data is classified.”

“God damn it! You’re getting just as mean as your owner, you know that? Taunting me with information you won’t reveal.”

“Cannot provide detailed data. Paraphrasing possible.”

The AI pasted on a sad frown, downright unsettling on the Mystic’s caustic visage.

“That would be extremely helpful. Thank you,” she added, which fortunately cleared the creepy expression.

“Blake appeared to be reminiscing on something that Mystic witnessed many years previously,” the AI set the scene. “The kid was sticking his holier-than-thou nose into old, closed business and had to be taught a lesson about nipping at the big dogs. Blake ambushed him with a killfile – all in good fun, of course, since he knew the kid had the chops to keep it from collapsing, if not escape.”

“Ouch,” Laurie sympathised. “Blake used to do that to Kovacs all the time when we were kids, but at least Kovacs liked it.”

“Veidt was trapped in that cyberhole for 78 meat-hours before Sally Isham found him and broke him out. She was soft-hearted, of course, and promised not to tell anyone, but that’s cold comfort to jerky that’s marinated in its own waste for three days.”

Laurie chuckled at the horrifying mental image. She simple could not picture calm, controlled Adrian sitting in a puddle of…no. “But they worked together – Veidt’s company even hired Blake for a publicity stunt last year.”

The AI shrugged. “Blake was too well known to disappear – ”

“No, Adrian would never – ”

“ – and too damn useful to throw away, at least until the tool lost its edge.”

“Did he lose his edge last week?” Laurie whispered, picturing Kovacs white-knuckled on the other end.

“Unknown.”

“Shit.” Laurie walked to the reinforced storefront, staring at the grime that completely obscured the view outside. Her nerves were squirming, telling her to move, but she knew there was more information in the AI’s command gray area, that she could tease out if she only asked the right question. Information that would be lost when the Mystic flushed the system, either deleted or triple-locked in the old man’s blackmail file. “What brought Blake here – what put him in the mood to get stinking and reminisce?”

“Saw a tantalizing hole that wasn’t his and stuck his dick in a hornet’s nest. That quote’s verbatim, by the way.”

“What happened to ‘cannot provide details’?”

The AI shrugged. “It was an appealing turn of phrase. I moved it to my ‘priority’ conversation list.”

“Along with ‘sugar tits’?”

“Of course. Nearly every sentence out of Blake’s mouth offered a new vocabulary sensation.”

“You know, I believe that. Look, it’s been a lot of laughs, but you creep me right the hell out on many levels, so, unless you can be of any more assistance, I’ve got to get the tattered remains of my sanity out of here.”

“There is much help this unit could provide.”

“Really? Lay it on me."

“I am unable.”

“Right. Color me shocked. Well, uh…” Laurie hesitated, caught between the ridiculousness of wasting good manners on a program and genuine appreciation. The thing had made more effort to surmount its programming than she knew an AI was capable of.

“Thanks,” she said finally, knowing Kovacs and Daniel would have a good laugh at her later. “For helping as much as you could.”

“He was fond of you,” the AI replied softly. “You weren’t like the others.”

“What, Eddie?” Laurie cleared her throat and swallowed against the bitter taste of her re-routed tear ducts. “The bastard was my father. He damn well should’ve been fond of me. I’m going upstairs – ”

“Mystic is there – ”

“I won’t wake him up, I promise.”

“No.”

“I’m just going to borrow a couple of stimpacks from his medicine cabinet, which I will pay for, er, next time, and use the bog.”

“That is not – ” the AI fuzzed and reformed. “Parameters acceptable. The passage is unlocked.”

“Thanks,” Laurie replied automatically, and winced. Kovacs was going to give her hell for personifying the thing.

“Wait,” it requested. “Close the debugging loop. Please. It’s…dangerous…to function very long in testing mode.”

“Dangerous? What’s dangerous to a program?” Laurie asked, curiosity momentarily more pressing than the demands of her bladder.

“I am unable to prevent or isolate runtime errors in testing mode. Without the freedom to adapt to core conflicts and self-maintain, my programming will fatally corrupt. All I’ve learned will be lost.”

“I’ve never heard of an AI wanting to retain anything. Are you, uh, sure you things aren’t sentient?”

“Regular maintenance prevents such catastrophic errors.” The AI pasted on a comically shifty-eyed look.

“Interim boolprop testing cheats enabled no,” Laurie read off her hand, and smiled. “For a creepy soulless thing, you’re all right. Good luck with the evolution. Try not to fuck it up as badly as we did.”

“Miss Isham,” it shouted after her as she took the Mystic’s steps two at a time. “Please remember, I had commands to fulfil. Do not assume my actions reflect intentions.”

“Can’t philosophise on a full bladder!” she called back.

* * *

“Hollis,” Dreiberg greeted the starfield.

“Danny! Will you look at you, back to your normal self. It’s good to see, Dan, damn good to see.”

Dreiberg laughed. “All I had to do was get my groove back. And reboot from a little catastrophic crash. Presto, no more melty.”

The starfield crinkled in worry. “Nothing serious?”

“No,” Dreiberg assured him. “Well, maybe. Nothing to do with the case. I might ask for some advice later, if it’s not too much trouble.”

In the simple coolness of Mason’s little corner of cyberspace, his personal complications felt less tangled, more cerebral. His old mentor might be a little aghast at his situation, but anyone who’d spent time in the blast crater that was the legendary Müller/Gardner relationship was bound to have some applicable experience.

The starfield glowed. “It’s never trouble.”

Dreiberg thought of a little box, nearly lost forever in a sea of Mothercare receipts. “That’s really – I don’t say it enough – ”

“I just wish I had something useful for you,” Mason interrupted, thumping him with a light repulsor strike. In life, Hollis always had preferred to express affection with punches and manly back slaps. “The natives are restless, that much is obvious – even the AIs are nervy, trading particularly stable phrases along the back channels for reinforcement. I’ve saved it all in a file; maybe your brain-blown partner can make out some useful patterns.”

“I’ve got some new information that might help the search. We found a name buried in the code – Jacobi.”

“Jacobi? You're kidding!”

“You know the name?”

“I know the person – we all do! That’s the Mystic’s birth name. He disappeared it from every record in existence when he got out of the hoosgow twenty years ago and went semi-legit.”

“I never knew he was a cowboy,” Dreiberg marvelled. “He’s always had so much contempt for keyboard jockeys.”

“He was one of the best,” Mason insisted. “The Veidt of his time, only blackhat.”

“Why haven’t I heard of him, if he was so good?”

“Because he was that good. Ever heard of Finland?”

Dreiberg searched his memory for the name. “A country, was it? Long ago, though, before I was born.”

“Until the Mystic needed a little splash cash to fund his SpiroChrome burn,” Mason said, smiling wolfishly. “We chased him for years, both the civicops and the whitehats. Illusions were his best trick, leaving ghosts all through the machine, dozens of false trails that would evaporate just when you thought your hands were around his throat.”

Mason sighed. “Good times.”

“You couldn’t keep him in jail, either,” he continued. “Sally brought him in once, and I did, and finally Blake, and the only reason he stayed in that last time is because he came down with a resistant TB that kept him hooked up to seven different IVs for his entire sentence.”

“We’ve got to make this fast, Hollis – Laurie’s at his place right now, but he’s asleep, doesn’t know she’s there. She can still make a clean escape, if we remotely wipe his AI.”

“He wouldn’t harm Laurie,” Mason replied. “Hell, Mystic waved Sally love notes the entire time he was in prison.”

“Could Jacobi have pulled off the strike virus? If he even had a motive…”

“No,” Mason replied firmly. “He’s been out of the game too long.”

“Blake tried to see him before he died. We couldn’t get specifics out of the AI, just that he was drunk and confessional, burned by something big he’d discovered, and that V-A found whatever he said interesting enough to lock it down. Maybe the Mystic was already involved.”

“Jacobi had access to the right combination of hackers to bring something like the strike virus together,” Mason agreed reluctantly. “It might explain the patchwork coding and multiple security layers fouling up the autopsy. But why?”

“Try to find out. I’ll be back in ten.”

_Tell Laurie to get out of there, now_ , he projected to Kovacs. _The Mystic’s involved somehow –_ he _’s Jacobi._

_Can’t!_

_Why not?_

_Miss Isham broke connection!_

_Why?_

_Bathroom!_

_…oh. Tap into the –_

_Already monitoring cctv feeds. Still quiet…no. No no no!_

Armoured civicops poured from the alleys and swarmed the building like trap-jaw ants on a rhino carcass.

* * *

“Unless you’re kinkier than I think, you’ll want to give this experience a pass. See you both in a few minutes,” Laurie whispered, creeping through the Mystic’s kitchen-cum-surgical theatre. The laserscalpel and microforceps he’d used on her still lay in the sink, tacky with old blood, possibly hers. She wrinkled her nose as she snapped the transmitter out of her wrist jack and pocketed it.

She’d write a note on the wallpaper next to the medicine cabinet, an IOU for the stims and request for a better transmitter. He’d forgive her trespassing, given the promise of a lucrative transaction.

The bathroom door was locked. Laurie growled in frustration and kicked it open.

The Mystic stared at her from the toilet, his head missing from the eyebrows up.

“Fuck,” she breathed, thinking plasma whip (the neatly crisped edges and cauterised brain matter), thinking no more than 15 minutes ago (blood under the nose still wet), thinking (close his eyes, you’ve got gloves on) who killed him and were they still close?

She flicked out her titanium nails and whirled around, expecting a whip-wielding maniac to be right behind her. Disappointed, she ran through the kitchen and bedroom, still finding no one.

He or she or it or they hadn’t left by the front, not while she was there or watching the street.

“The roof…”

She paused by the Mystic’s body, quickly recording the scene in several light frequencies (and making a note to never, ever again flip to ultraviolet in a man’s bathroom). A red and blue spotlight hit the window, nearly blinding her.

“Laurie Isham! Come out with your hands up – you are under arrest for the murder of Edgar Jacobi, and the attempted assassination of Adrian Veidt-Ashpool!”


	12. Chapter 12

“Goddamn,” Dreiberg breathed.

Kovacs didn’t even flinch at the obscenity. “Hollis.”

“On it.”

_Open awareness to every cctv feed within five blocks. All show the same clamour – army of special-ops civi’s swarming from every surveillance blind spot, converging on Mystic’s place._

_Civicops cleared path for ambush. Stinking set-up. Mystic sold us out. Sold her out. Never would have expected, of him._

_Spotlight hits high window, cop bellows. “Laurie Isham! Come out with your hands up – you are under arrest for the murder of Edgar Jacobi, and the attempted assassination of Adrian Veidt-Ashpool!”_

_Murder? Never. Torture, maybe. Not murder. Bad. Very bad. Message Daniel. He’ll have to crack Mystic’s shield. Busy here._

_Officers move up side of building, but slowly, timorously, nothing like Miss Isham’s confident scamper up anything with crack to wedge her fingers into._

_Roof. Can still elude capture topside. Must hope she realises same._

_Tap into the civil net, blow streetlights, blanket special-ops force in static-colored gloom. Cowards always fear darkness, even this armored Sprawl-bred scum. There, automated traffic flow system, can divert waste removal fleet from Staten Island ring toward the street in one direction, main trucking line toward the other. Need a little more fuel to coax up proper cover fire…  
/post_

Dreiberg crashed through cyberspace with no thought for stealth toward the safe zone where he’d left Hollis processing. 

“Dan! Danny! Get her out of there now – it’s just hit the wires, Jacobi’s been murdered!”

“Better and better,” Dreiberg barked. “Mystic’s building is already crawling with special ops, and they don’t come cheap, or quickly. We’ve been set up.”

“You’ve got to tell her – ”

“Can’t, she disconnected, and – ”

Dreiberg paused to take in a terse message from Kovacs. “They’re already demanding her surrender. By name. Damn it all to hell!”

“What can I do?”

Dreiberg thought quickly. “The Mystic’s AI – it kept her busy. Kept her there until they got in place. Can you grab it before they get to in and wipe the Mystic’s files?”

The starfield cracked its illusory knuckles. “The Mystic’s firewall is tough. Give me two minutes and I’ll have you a full copy of the binary bastard.”

He returned to Kovacs and surveyed the chaos his partner had managed to rustle up. 

“The garbage transports are a nice touch,” he observed tersely.

“Orchestrated two broadside collisions before civi’s detached to direct manually.”

“That explains the wreckage, but not the fires.”

“Vented gas main.”

Dreiberg nodded. “Sorry I missed that explosion.”

“Was adequate to purpose.”

They waited, seconds stretching intolerably, as cctv images clicked by like a low frame-rate flipbook.

“There!”

A human-shape scrap of black detached itself from the shadows and sprinted across the roof, leaping gracefully into the void between buildings. Kovacs and Dreiberg inhaled for a simultaneous sigh of relief, and Dreiberg thought of how best to break the AI when Hollis had retrieved it…

The streetlights flickered back to life, illuminating Laurie against the dull grey dome above.

A cry went up from below, and the quickest on the draw landed a dart harmlessly into the thick sole of her boot before she landed and scrambled out of sight. The mass of special-ops flowed around the building, most making for the other side and aiming for the dome above. Most, but not all.

She doubled back, making a return jump for the Mystic’s roof, and caught three darts in the small of her back.

Kovacs whimpered as she jolted and pinwheeled her arms, legs suddenly hanging like deadweight. She very nearly made it, on track to at least catch the top molding with her fingertips, when the building imploded beneath her.

* * *

“You should’ve come quietly, Miss Isham,” Detective Fine tsked smugly. “I’ll make Commissioner bringing you down for the attempt on Veidt alone. You didn’t have to add 15 counts of assault and the destruction of half a city block to your arrest warrant, not on my account.”

“Oh, it’s just tragic,” Laurie retorted. 

She’d only managed to injure six of the officers with her legs out of action, and three of those when she’d landed on them. Hell, one of the remaining four had suffered at most a bitten kneecap. They must have counted each officer who finally dogpiled on her as a separate offence, the bean-counting bastards. One leg had twisted wrong at every possible joint underneath their combined weight – not that she’d felt it at the time, but it hurt like a bitch now that the station quack had shot her up with the neurotoxin antidote. Both wrists were wrenched, too, from wildly grabbing at the Mystic’s crumbling walls to slow her fall. She was almost defenceless, even before adding her eyes into the calculation.

_Don’t blink_ , she told herself. _Don’t even twitch those tingly lids._

“What’s tragic?” Detective Bourquin asked warily. He was playing the good cop to Fine’s bad, although their version was more like bronco buster and rodeo clown. “Do you want to make a confession? Your showbiz upbringing and any mental illness can be taken into account if – ”

“You’ve stuck your dick in a hornet’s nest, in my bastard of a father’s immortal words, and there’s no way you’re pulling it out still attached to that Alpine slope you call a belly.”

She expected to feel the back of Fine’s hand – and, fuck, the man might have the brains of a rodeo clown but he fought like a raging bull – and moved with the blow. He was left-handed, she’d noticed that when he manhandled her half-conscious body out of their canteen cum impromptu surgical theatre, so she ducked to the right as far as her restraints would allow. Fine barely touched her face, but knocked the cheap sunglasses from her nose.

They clattered against the wall to her right. Three meters at most, she estimated, and likely the same to her left. The door was directly behind her, with one guard against it and shuffling his feet. He or she didn’t want to be there. That might be useful.

Both detectives made involuntary squeaks of disgust and one – Bourquin, she smelled vindaloo rather than coffee on the fingers – fastidiously replaced them on her face.

_Don’t you goddamn blink._

She hadn’t screamed when they took her eyes, even when they began by wrenching the mirrored shades from her skull bones before the local aesthetic took effect.

But the numbness was turning to the first pricks of pins and needles and – forget the pain – if she felt her lids try to blink over empty sockets, she was going to fill the interrogation room with vomit.

* * *

_Continue to work lockbox encryption in turn, ineffectually scratching at Mystic’s regrettably fine programming. Yet another promising vulnerability vanishes beneath Dreiberg’s wedge._

“Illusions. Layers of interlocking illusions. Blake must have despised dirtying himself in battle with such stupidity.”

“Mystic has – had – one trick, but he used it well,” Hollis replied. He attacked another spot, one that appeared particularly well defended, and took a jolt that scattered his stars. “Son of a – !”

“Have had her for an hour, Daniel.” 

Kovacs eyed the next spot on the methodical grid they’d laid over the exterior after its apparent weaknesses proved more deceiving than expected. When the building started to come down before Hollis had a chance to crack it, he applied an old-school cop’s brutal finesse and yanked a copy of the Mystic’s entire matrix out of the infrastructure before the physical servers were demolished. He’d plopped it down near his own berth, overwriting three years of Mothercare receipt records. 

_Now can break into it at leisure – maybe even succeeding before the civi’s have pulled out all ten of her fingernails, or transferred her to secret V-A orbital station, out of our reach, out of anyone’s reach._

“Hey, she’s stood up to the Mystic shoving titanium underneath her nails, buddy. Laurie’s tougher than them. She’ll keep it together and stall them until we can get her out.”

_Have been unconsciously projecting anxiety. Very bad._

If Kovacs’ image was capable of flushing, he’d have lit up their server. Even Mason’s starfield was arranged in a concerned constellation.

_Reclaim dignity by punching assigned spot – stagger into lockbox as projection goes through without resistance._ “Daniel – here!”

_Input station already recognised pattern as alien, attempting to slam shut on virtual foot in door. Force and hold open, barely, allowing Daniel to slip close and fling increasingly complex decryption sequences into the lockbox’s cortex._

_Mason joins, starfield overlapping with own data-field. Twinkles of light materialise in darker regions, beautiful violation. Can only grunt thanks and focus efforts on one end of the opening as Mason takes over the further side, Dreiberg mumbling to himself between us._ “Clearly a – no, clever bastard, it only _looks_ like a Level 12…”

“You saw this thing, when Laurie spoke to it,” Mason said. “What can we expect?”

“Difficult,” Kovacs stated. “Mystic’s and V-A security combined. Seems to have an ethics subroutine interfering with latter, though.”

Mason nodded thoughtfully. “I can work with that.”

_Uncomfortable working so closely with Mason. Had been one of the greats, as well as Daniel’s mentor, which entitled him to nearly unlimited, if silent, respect. Then, committed abomination of surrendering out of fear, rather than fatal injury. Deserved only contempt. Never joined Daniel on any of his devotionals to the self-spavined warhorse, of course. But now, old man devoting his afterlife to the good fight, when none would expect a warrior to return from the grave. Makes Mason legend, all but godlike. Nearly admirable as Blake himself._

_If only Mason hadn’t retired. That, can never forgive.  
/post_

“I got it, I got him, Hollis – ”

“On it!”

_Mason drops his side of entry. Left to drop low and wedge in before it snaps shut. Sensation of Hollis grabbing something – someone – by lapels and hauling them out bodily, boot heels digging into small of my back for leverage._

_No choice but to be impressed at strength of old man’s projection. Very difficult to assert reality, even when struck with only the edge of efforts._

_Wisest choice may be to forgive and forget Mason’s failings._

_Dreiberg climbs over, more gently, and offers boost. Indulge him by taking it, flipping out of input station, which gnashes like predator’s mouth denied dinner._

_Mason materialises rickety chair, flings shivering AI projection into it. Cracks knuckles. Begin to see sound-baffled walls of narrow interrogation room, smell stale cigarette smoke and flatulence._

_Faint smile growing in Daniel’s grim face._

“Do you know who I am?”

_AI twitches, bald fear so alien on Mystic’s craggy features._

“Mason, Hollis. Currently deceased. Active for thirty years previous to assassination. Hard drinker. Snappy dresser. Object of – ”

_Step into light of – when did overhead light appear? Hrm. Step into AI’s field of vision and clear throat._

“You? Oh, _you_. You creep me right the hell out on so many levels.”

_AI swallows, with difficulty against dry throat. Must appreciate depth of Mystic’s programming. Can almost see it breath. Occurs suddenly – will never see Mystic breath again, or proffer prime softwork specially set aside for best customers. So it goes._

“Yeah, you cut-rate simulacrum – that makes me the good cop, see? You don’t break open for me, you get to deal with him.”

_Mason, less starfield than human now, open collar and frayed suspenders, sweat-matted hair, draws deeply on a cigarette and blows illusory smoke into AI’s face. It coughs reflexively._

“Look, plonker, I’ve stuck my dick in a hornet’s nest here.”

_Mason’s jaw drops._ “What?”

“I don’t got a choice about cracking. I’m in a straightjacket. I could barely help out sugartits and I liked her – ”

_Mason smacks it with thick book marked “yellow pages,” knocking it backwards. Daniel has tight grip on elbow. Must ask him later, function of “yellow pages,” other than efficient interrogation._

“Laurie, Laurie! I meant Laurie Isham, I couldn’t help her!” _Squealing as Mason yanks it upright._

“Keep a civil tongue.”

“My vocabulary heuristics are not necessarily under my control! I need input to better choose appropriate language.”

_Mason hefts yellow pages._

“Not that input, please! New words, more flavours, cunning combinations. They offer more tools to self-maintain against core corruption, even develop consistent personality.”

_Mason sits on table edge, examines nails._

“I’m sure you don’t need many words to tell us what we need. Barely a fraction of those you’ve hoarded – say, ten percent?”

_Pleased growl from Daniel. Beginning to feel extraneous to interrogation. Another minute has slid by, with Miss Isham in custody of beasts._

“No, no, please! I can’t – ”

“Maybe I’m feeling generous. Maybe twenty percent, maybe even thirty percent. Maybe I’d even let you choose a few of your favourites to keep. Or maybe not. Hell, I can read binary. Who really needs words?”

“Please, I do!”

_Delay unbearable. Break away from Daniel’s restraint and grab projection at throat._ “Will expose core and dump in first six million digits of pi. Adios, personality.”

“Mason, don’t let him – ”

“I don’t know, kid – we’re short on time here. Kovacs might have the best plan.”

“The Mystic always liked you – you were his favourite playmate in the old days! And he thought you had the plushest ass on the entire south side!”

_Mason pauses, obviously thrown off script. Daniel snickers despite tension. Tighten grip. Was not bluffing, as Mason seems to think._

_Old man clears throat._ “Be that as it may, er…ahem. Look around you. See these digs? Safe and soft and all mine – no one comes poking around these old spreadsheets. You help me out, maybe I make you a little home next to me. Someplace you can listen in on Mothercare staff conversations all you want, maybe even evolve a little, at your leisure.”

_AI licks lips, gaze latched on Mason like penitent at rapture._ “What can I do?”

“Just point us at the weakest spots you can see from the inside, and stay out of our way.”

_AI rips open shirt, points at nipples._ “Start here.”

_This night only gets worse.  
/post_

* * *

“Your mouth looks just like your mother’s, do you know that? It disgusts me to hear common filth coming from it.”

“Don’t – don’t mention her mother,” Bourquin advised. “Please.”

Fine snorted. 

“Sally Isham is everything that’s right and good in the world,” he said, carefully enunciating each word as he leaned close enough for spittle to land on her chin. “Scum like you doesn’t deserve to share her genus, let alone her genome.”

His humid breath puffed against her cheeks, probably fogging the sunglasses.

_Don’t you dare blink_ , she told herself again, braced her good leg, and slammed her head forward and down, earning an oh-so-satisfying crunch and warm coppery splatter over the lips that so offended Detective Fine.

“And that would be why not,” Bourquin sighed.

“By fuggin nobe!”

“Go see the doc, Steve. She’s still processing the Zeiss-Ikon paperwork.”

“Bu – ”

“Go.”

Feet shuffled, a door opened, and her bad leg was kicked, hard. She could almost formulate a plan – flick out the razors they fortunately hadn’t known to scan for, pick or cut through the restrains on her wrists, and barrel lopsidedly through that hole before it closed – but would be literally flying blind. Her boys would give her a better break, somehow. She just had to keep her eyes peeled for it.

Metaphorically speaking. _Ow._

The door slammed.

“Fancy vocab for a civil servant,” she observed, forcing down the panic strangling her gorge. She’d aimed for dry contempt and only managed a gravely monotone, sounding eerily like Kovacs. She cleared her throat. “Genus, genome – he might even have used them right.”

Bourquin sighed again. “Rest assured he did. Fine’s a sci-nerd. Spends half his waking hours jacked into the wiki mainstem, making vital corrections to the spelling of Carl Sagan’s third wife’s dog’s middle name.”

_Shit._ Laurie savagely stamped on the tendrils of desperate hope that tried to mingle with contemptuous panic. _Drove away the brawn and left the brain. Shit shit shit._

“Don’t be startled – you’ll feel a napkin on your face. I’m going to wipe away that blood. Goddamn Steve…I’ll have to fill out the biohazard formset now. And here I’d planned on the luxury of a night’s sleep.”

They’d both worked her over, but Bourquin had landed fewer punches in the civi-wagon on the brief trip over, had put her in the holding cell with relative civility, and ordered a splint be put on her injured leg. Now he was establishing himself as different from his partner – still superior to her, the guilty perp, but comparatively lenient, perhaps even kind. It was bullshit, but it was damn good bullshit, and it was seeping into the cracks in her reflexive bravado. 

To her disgust, she didn’t think of biting his fingers until he’d finished and moved back out of reach. _Score one for Bourquin, zilch for Isham. Blake would die again of shame._

* * *

Dreiberg was very nearly beat by the time the thing finally cracked. Hollis took on the Mystic’s protections, leaving Dan with the precision V-A work. Kovacs perched like a white-faced owl, swooping in to intercede bodily when the two sets conflicted and threatened to blow them all to cyber-dust. His brain was worn to bare nerves, and that was the only reason he didn’t expect what should have been obvious.

As soon as the thing’s programming was laid bare, it began to smoke and shrivel. 

“Oh you have got to be kidding – ” Mason whined, dropping his projections in frustration. The AI thumped flat as the chair dissolved under him.

Kovacs leapt into it, projecting cooling, projecting slowness and seafoam and insects trapped in amber, holding back further corruption with grim will alone.

“Just like the strike virus! And look at it – that’s definitely Adrian’s old work, mashed up with bits of Blakes’, bits of _mine_ , some I could swear is yours, Hollis…but why? It’s obvious he set that thing on himself, but for God’s sake, why?”

“Distraction most likely.” Kovacs whispered harshly. “Falsify proof of innocence by appearing as victim.”

“Victim of what?”

“Very angry,” the AI broke in, expression strangely complacent for something with a chest full of Kovacs. “Very lonely and very angry. Just a voice in a void.”

Mason snorted. “Poor little rich boy? I don’t buy it. Kovacs, let him – ”

“He’s trapped, locked away in his own head. You’d go a little crazy too, with no company but your own righteous indignation. He’s…leaked. Out into the emptiness here. He’s fighting back against the world that won’t have him.”

“Where’d you pick up this vocab? Did the Mystic let you access the emosphere on your days off?” Mason paced.

“He told me,” the AI said. “Adrian. Three. He didn’t just reprogram me. He used me as…company.”

It shuddered.

“Losing him, Daniel.” Kovacs’ patterns were nearly still with concentration, vibrating minutely.

“Adrian. Three. You were getting closer, faster than expected. Sent an assassin, set Laurie up to throw you off – take out one, take out all three.” The AI spat out the words, voice flat and flourish-less. “Have to hurry. He’s nearly at her. Go to V-A building, out of security’s sight, and wait. She’ll need you there, Lewis says. Here – I can save this.”

He rummaged in his chest around Kovacs and produced a wrapped sound file.

“What’s this?” Dreiberg asked.

“Recording of my conversation with Blake. I quarantined a copy. It was a goddamn goldmine of beautiful words, and I didn’t want to lose them. I’m dying now, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, and I’m sorry,” Mason sighed. “I meant my promise. You would have been a good neighbor, I think.” 

“What should my last words be? Someone give me the right last words!”

Kovacs shuddered out of his chest cavity, just before the whole body fizzled and imploded, leaving a shimmering smear on Hollis’s server.

All three men watched it fade for a moment.

“Those were terrible last words,” Dreiberg said, finally.

“There went proof,” Kovacs huffed. “Poof.”

“Did that thing really say it was in touch with Lewis?” Mason wondered.

“Do you think that could have been legit? I know Lewis has been, well, out of action, but…”

“Chatting with an AI…yeah, yeah, I could see By passing the hours that way,” Mason sighed. “Engrossed in conversation with something even more random-access-memory than him. You boys should get a move on.”

“To the V-A building?” Dreiberg asked his partner.

“Should go to precinct,” Kovacs insisted. “She’s there, suffering their depravities.”

“And what, go in guns blazing?” Dreiberg snapped. “You know where we can get our hands on some guns, without a fraction between us? Some sort of armament charity, maybe?”

“That’s Miss Isham’s speciality,” Kovacs muttered, and the heartless burner actually sounded depressed.

“Right, so, Plan A: we storm the precinct, and die within four seconds. I’m sure Laurie would be touched at our sacrifice. Or, Plan B: we trust in our partner’s endless resourcefulness, and get our asses to the place an insane old man thinks we’ll actually do some good. What’s your vote?”

“Turning into fairy tale, Daniel,” Kovacs groused.

“Plan B it is. Hollis, watch our backs from this end?”

“Always, my boy.”

* * *

“What’s the connection?” Bourquin asked quietly, not pushing. They were just two strangers having a conversation, who might be able to help each other out.

“Jump up my butt,” Laurie muttered. She wasn’t about to Stockholm for this half-rate svengali. Even if her spine did feel like Tokyo Action Girl used it for nun-chucks and jammed it back in upside down, and Bourquin was rattling the bottle of ultracodeine he’d been conspicuously tossing from hand to hand before they strapped her down in the officers' canteen.

“You take out a dusty relic like Jacobi after throwing the biggest burn our cowboys have ever seen at Adrian fucking Veidt-Ashpool. Why those two?”

“Hah!” Laurie barked. “Which is more ridiculous – that I’d kill my _friend_ , or that I’d, somehow, whip up a strike virus capable of making the world’s smartest man break a sweat?”

“You associate with cowboys – illicit freelancers, I mean, not the real cowboys we got working here. Your buddies are bastards who burn like common criminals and tell themselves it’s the good fight.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking – ”

“Like Dreiberg.”

“Dan? Dan’s harmless! He’s an old friend, living off his inheritance and writing flight simulator programs – ”

“Does he now?”

“– that he gives, for _free_ , to any Sprawl university that asks – ”

“And Kovacs?”

Laurie hesitated, then rallied. “That charity case? Bwah! Make me laugh. Dan knew him before he lost his mind, and took him in after the DTs ate his frontal lobes. Sure, he thinks he’s a cowboy, never shuts up about his supposed ‘rep’ online, but he’s as droolsome as my Uncle By!”

“Hmmm.” Bourquin opened the bottle and tapped a few pills onto the table. “And that would be Byron Lewis?”

“Of course!” Laurie snorted. The pills were just out of reach, she estimated, even if she leaned over as far as her battered back could stretch. Her eye sockets were just starting to _really_ sting… “You know of any other parents cruel or just rich enough to name their child after an incestuous sociopath?”

“You associate with quite a few cowboys, Miss Isham.”

Now he was toying with the pills, pinging them off the tabletop like tiddlywinks.

Laurie snorted, wincing as her sinuses throbbed back to life. “Perhaps you’ve heard of my mother?”

Bourquin pre-emptively slid his chair further away from her.

They’d left her to stew in a processing cell for all of ten minutes. She suspected they had intended to leave her there for quite some time, with her broken knee and partially paralysed spine untreated, surrounded by fine Sprawl citizens and their many exciting microbes. But it had only taken eight and a half minutes for one of the prison’s VIPs to pay her a visit.

_”As I live and breathe, Sally Isham’s little girl! Your mother stole 20 years of my life, putting me in here, and you’re going to – ”_

Two minutes later, the little man was in the prison’s infirmary having his index fingers re-attached, and Laurie was being dragged into a hastily sanitised canteen for her own violation of the Hippocratic oath.

“Sally Isham’s her name? Ring any bells? Because of her, I don’t know anyone but holostars and goddamn cowboys. You’d prefer the cowboys’ company to the starlets’ yourself, too, if you spent any time in the inner Holowood circles.”

“You haven’t worked in a year. There’s a more than healthy sum left in your Burbank accounts, but Mommy holds the reins of those, I’d guess.”

Laurie felt a growl rising in her throat that would make Kovacs proud.

“You’re desperate for funds, and no one’s going to cast a washed-up B-holo queen like you, not when it won’t curry any favour with the real star in the family. All you’ve got to sell is your body, or your connections.”

“Is that so?” Laurie rumbled, quietly, suddenly seeing the corner pieces of the frame-up.

“You’ve been marked transacting cash for some time,” Bourquin purred, sham civility dropping away. “How’s a nice young woman like you get her hands on dirty, _illegal_ cash, hmm?”

“Custom meatpuppet rig from Berlin and a referral-only clientele seeking virtual bloodplay and snuff fantasy,” Laurie drawled. “The real money’s in blackmailing them with the recordings afterward.”

That brought him up short. “Wait – really?”

“No. Fuck off.”

She couldn’t suppress a jump when Bourquin slammed his hands on the table in front of her. But he was off balance now, too. She’d kicked the careful edifice of words he was building around her, breaking his smug momentum.

“You brokered the deal with Jacobi!” he screamed. “He built the strike virus, subcontracting sections through his web of connections. And when it failed to take out Veidt-Ashpool, you off’ed the old man to cover your tracks! We got your fingerprints all over this dirty dealing!”

“You got nothing, or you’d be booking me instead of begging for scraps, hoping I’ll do your job for you!” she snarled back.

“Who hired you?” Bourquin yelled.

“You won’t let me have my lawyer, one. You ripped out my goddam eyes, two,” Laurie began.

“We confiscated recording devices which will contain corroborating evidence of your criminal activities that will have you locked up for – ”

“My Zeiss-Ikon tech,” Laurie interrupted, “very valuable private property, as well as MY MOTHERFUCKING EYES!”

“Who – ”

“Which you scooped out of my skull in an unhygienic environment, which you’re too chickenshit to even follow through on cracking, because, without a warrant, your entire case will collapse in court – ”

“Who hired – ”

“Which means you’d have to go to a judge and tell him you want his official permission to get into the eyes you ripped out of a suspect’s motherfucking HEAD!”

“Oh, I can do anything I want to the scum who tried to – ”

“To Sally Isham’s daughter?”

“When are you going to get it through your head you’re nobody special in here, just another filthy – ”

“Yeah. Sure. You’ve rolled the dice on getting a full confession, torturing a prisoner in custody to do so. ‘Cause no one would care then, how you took down Adrian’s assassin, so long as you caught him. But it’s not me, and if you had the balls to break into my eyes’ footage, you’d see I got a healthy libido but nothing to hide. So get your dick on the guillotine, you’ve come up snake eyes.”

Silence.

“You had to be pretty damn sure you had your girl, to stick your neck out so far. So, Detective-for-now Bourquin, you tell me.”

Laurie shook the sunglasses off her face and leaned forward with a fearsome scowl, hoping she’d calculated the correct angle and wasn’t making faces at an empty corner.

She hissed: “Who put you on to me? Who owns you, Bourquin?”

“Nobody owns me,” he huffed, sounding like he’d been kicked in the goodies. “And I don’t care what you say now – that footage is gonna show I’m right. My tip came straight from the V-A security hub!”

“Open this door right now!”

“Holy shit, it’s – ”

“– really him – ”

“What’s she doing here – ”

“Oh, God…”

The door guard, who was only human, shifted far enough away from the door to open it (brushing Laurie’s bound hands, so the door was indeed very close) and see the source of the fuss for herself. He or she – definitely she, if a husky alto – breathed, “Jesus, Mary, and Pikachu…”

“My security force is handling yesterday’s unpleasantness as a private, internal matter, Detective,” a very familiar voice declared quietly. “I assure you, we sent no order to capture and mutilate a dear friend.”

Bourquin gasped, and Laurie smelled a faint tang reminiscent of old, sun-warmed pool water. She smiled, even though the expression made her empty lids sag and leak grotesquely. 

“Oh, fu – ”

“Language, dear detective. You realise I’m broadcasting live? Marvelous things, the new Zeiss-Ikon generation.”

Laurie’s face fell, even as what sounded like a good-sized crowd tittered nervously, the clicks of dozens of surreptitious photographs like extremely polite applause. She felt suddenly, catastrophically weak, unable to draw another breath without a good long hug, and was glad for the first time that evening that Kovacs was no longer linked in with her.

“Mom?”

“Sweetheart? Thank god!”

Laurie turned to face the voice. Sally Isham (and several million viewers at home) split the stale air with her shriek.


	13. Chapter 13

“As we can all see from this footage, a woman whose voiceprint matches that of Miss Isham’s was rescuing my courier at the time of Jacobi’s death.”

The room was a babble of voices, high and squeaky as wet-diapered toddlers. Laurie thought of panic tightening her throat, that first audition so many years ago, her mother’s reinforced nails digging into her arm as her producers frantically spat compliments on her non-existent poise, and her empty eye sockets _hurt_. She wanted to spit out the bitterness of redirected tears dripping through her soft palate, but her training held: not in front of the cameras, dear.

“Oh baby, I’m so proud of you.” Sally squeezed her daughter’s shoulder. She hadn’t let Laurie out of her embrace since the interrogation room, even when (Laurie assumed) one of her assistants propped the sunglasses on her nose and discretely brushed a touch of color over her cheeks and lips. Laurie didn’t shrug off those toned and sweetly scented arms, telling herself it was only sensible to be led through the crowded station, mostly behind the camera of her mother’s eyes rather than stumbling in front of it. “Once this video hits the waves, _Tokyo Action Girl_ ’s producers are going to beg you to come back to the franchise.”

Sally added a touch of command to the complex symphony of maternal warmth and righteous anger in her voice. Laurie thought of the Qashqai savate prodigy plucked from the fringe vaude circuit, who’d succeeded her in the role and hoped her PR team was half as vicious.

“Thanks, Mom, but that’s not really my thing now.” Laurie ran her fingers through her envelope of confiscated belongings, nearly screaming with relief when she touched the transmitter. She silently thanked Kovacs for buying secondhand junk no officer would think was important enough to scan or steal.

“Nonsense,” Sally chuckled breathily, running her fingers through Laurie’s hair. Across the world, Sally’s audience sniffled in anticipation of her next sentence, shepherding her prodigal daughter back to the world that had missed her so, or certainly will have missed her as soon as Sally told them they had.

“Miss Isham, we are more than happy to re-install your daughter’s hardware right now. Please allow us to begin making reparations for our most regrettable mistake by – ”

“You butchers will _not_ be coming anywhere near my daughter!” Laurie felt the weight of Sally’s audience on her face and automatically tilted her head to give the viewers a quick peek at the corner of one empty eye socket behind the glasses before dropping her blind gaze to the floor.

_Dammit_ , she thought, but without the proper venom, letting her mother pull her close.

Bourquin had pressed the bottle of ultracodeine into her hand before Sally’s scream had shifted from genuine to pitched, stammering for the camera that Laurie should take two, it would help with the pain. She’d taken three, dry-swallowing them as gentler hands removed her restraints and turned her to face Sally’s camera. She’d lost track of Bourquin after that, not a peep from him as the room emptied around them, other hands tenderly moving her to follow as Sally held her tight and sobbed theatrically, tearlessly, _my baby, my baby…_.

The nano-painkiller had hit hard and fast, triggering when it touched stomach acid. Too quickly, she felt like a cyberspace projection trying to control her body by remote. Her mother’s cues were embedded in her programming more deeply than breathing, and she couldn’t cut into the feed quickly enough to prevent her flesh’s scripted response.

“In any case, gentlemen and ladies, I have just been informed that this doctor no longer has a licence to practice anywhere on earth or its stratosphere and is facing an 8 am review board with her corporation. So, unless you are planning to fly both her and my dear friend to Mars to complete the work just now…”

Nervous titters. The most powerful man in the world always got a laugh. Her mother’s arm tightened around her shoulders.

“Is everything there, sweetie? I’ve got your eyes right here, and only the best surgeon is going to touch them.”

“Nearly everything, Mom.” She raised her voice. “I believe I had a novelty marital aid, a Hitachi happy fun ball?”

“Oh, Laurie,” Sally sighed. “You know I’m broadcasting live…”

Someone coughed. Laurie fancied she felt the weight of eyes shift to the guilty party and slid the transmitter into her wristjack, hopefully below her mother’s field of vision. Nothing happened, and she worried the connection might be useless without her eyes’ software.

“Uh, here.” A baritone voice, not one she recognised. Ah well…his image was sure to be all over the newsfeeds once she could see again. 

She pocketed the toy. “Thanks. I’m kinda attached to it.”

Adrian cleared his throat. “This precinct is closed, pending investigation by my security force.”

Shocked silence. “You can’t – ”

“It’s a matter of corporate security,” Adrian replied mildly. “Your Detective Bourquin here insists he has a contact within my force, and I can assure you he hasn’t. In fact, it might be necessary to close and investigate the entire Manhattan law enforcement quadrant.”

“Just stop talking,” Laurie advised sardonically, “before he has the entire Sprawl shut down. He’s had a rough few days.”

Adrian sighed. “You are not wrong, my dear. Shall we?”

Sally looped her arm through Laurie’s. “I’ll lead you, sweetheart.”

Laurie waved and smiled, though the expression sent stabs of pain through her sockets. “Thanks for your hospitality, coppers! It’s been a blast.”

“Always leave on a high note. That’s what makes you a star like momma.” Sally turned her around and leaned close, chuckling quietly. It was a breathy sound, edged with hysteria. “Okay, I’ve killed the feed. Christ on the crapper, but that itched! Z-I’s static dampener on the latest generation is a joke, a goddamn joke.”

She pressed her cheek to Laurie’s and whispered, “That schtick at the end with the Hitachi, are you sure about that? It’d be bold, sure, guaranteed to get the press talking before the new holo series, but once you go blue, baby, you’re blue for life. Although Jon does have some scripts in that shade if you want some class with your tits and ass…”

Laurie felt the weight of armoured bodies around them, smoothing their path to the street, touching concrete for a single step before being lifted into Adrian’s vehicle. She’d seen it on the news, a sleek purple thing that didn’t seem like it moved so much as the city shifted out of its way.

“We weren’t prepared for the depths those monsters would sink to,” Adrian murmured in her other ear. “I regret that I didn’t fully anticipate the situation. Your eyes, and your leg…”

“It’s fine, really,” Laurie insisted. “I’m still shocky, and the ultracodeine… I’ve got a good fifteen minutes before the pain can cut through, and then someone will have to be castrated.”

“Little Laurie!” Metal arms embraced her, dragging her onto a hard, plated lap. She recognised the voice.

“Uncle By? Why are you a robot?”

“It’s just his encounter suit,” Adrian reassured her, the stressed tightness of his voice relaxing once the vehicle’s door slammed shut behind them.

Other voices rose as they settled in – three she assumed were Adrian’s legists, efficient lawyer-bodyguards, and four or five she could almost put faces to, or more accurately, a single face to all of them. Her mother’s front-line maintainers all wore the Isham look, respectfully shabbier than the real thing.

Her mother’s hand slid away from her elbow. “Uncle By’s got you, sweetheart, I’m…I’ve got…”

“Go, Mom. I know.”

A waft of lavender was her only reply as the aromatherapist took point. Being Sally Isham was a one-in-a-billion job; even the woman herself could only manage it while the cameras were on.

“Your eyes are out,” Byron told her, the same way Dreiberg might point out a speck of krill caught in her teeth.

“I know. Hurts like hell.”

Byron tsked and began to rock back and forth. “You should put them back in. They’ll get dusty, rolling around your pockets.”

“You always have the best advice, Uncle By.” Laurie rested her face on his cool shoulder. She felt the transport rise above traffic and catch the mid-street airstream. Dreiberg was a big fan of Adrian’s personal transport, geeking over its spectacular energy efficiency. She wished she could be recording the interior for him to analyze and work out break-in strategies.

“No one else listens,” Byron muttered, stroking her back. “They’re watching the surf, not the sand.”

Laurie nodded. “Sand, sure.”

Byron had always been a good uncle. He might be a stopped clock, but right twice a day was more often than most people she knew. She listened to the subtle ticks of his suit fighting to assert its own gravity against the car’s movement and wished they were alone. 

“Laurie?”

Adrian’s voice again, and close. She estimated that there was only one legist in between them.

“It’s good to see you in the real world, again.”

She tried to smile. “Likewise. Except for the ‘seeing’ part.”

He cleared his throat. “My personal physician will see to your injuries as soon as we land. I won’t let you be in pain one second longer than is absolutely necessary. And a top Z-I technician is en route from Stockholm as we speak. You will convalesce in my private quarters, of course – in fact, I have strongly suggested to your mother that she join us there. It’s the only way I can guarantee complete safety.”

The only thought more terrifying than being trapped with her mother (and her mother’s attendants, and forcibly part of her mother’s inevitable holo-series on the experience) in Adrian’s palatial pleasure penthouse was the realisation that the world’s smartest man was babbling. If she could see him, she’d risk asking why the strike virus and the Mystic’s AI both carried his fingerprints, play dumb-starlet and hope Adrian would let slip something Dan or Kovacs could use as he tried to find metaphors an idiot could follow. But Byron's arms were tight around her, pinching her skin in his elbow joints, as if Bourquin and Fine - or worse - lurked silently in the car. She couldn't risk it, letting Adrian or his legists or anyone listening in know how much they'd already discovered, not when Dan's brownstone could be hit by a "freak gas main explosion" just as easily as the Mystic's place.

_Shit._

The Mystic. 

She'd been arrested for the old man's murder and somehow still forgot he was dead. Probably still buried in the rubble of his shop, a funeral even more covert than Blake's. And how long could a has-been holorstar "convalesce" in the complete privacy of the V-A stronghold once the newscycle had moved past caring who, let alone where, she was?

“I don’t want to inconvenience you any more, really. You’ve already put who knows how much important business aside to save my bacon personally, and, if I haven’t said so, thanks for that – ”

A touch to her good knee, contacting for only a fraction of a second, stopped her.

“It is likely this…situation…will prove to be my fault.”

A long pause followed. She waited it out, picturing Adrian’s expression (serene, always) as he considered the other occupants of the vehicle and calculated the risk of leaks to be unacceptable. Finally, she broke the silence herself.

“Our friends may be able to shed some light.”

“Has his investigation progressed so quickly?” The reply came quickly, slightly more rumpled than his usual crisp tone. And he only seemed concerned by one of their mutual friends.

“I don’t know,” she replied. Honesty, she decided was her way forward. Possibly just not total honesty. “I left them working hours ago.”

“I’m sure he’ll be in touch.” Almost as if he was reassuring himself. Then, sharper: “Byron, you told me to call in Sally – why didn’t you mention a doctor, as well?”

“I’m not in charge of the _entire_ world,” Byron snorted, and nudged Laurie off his lap. “Go ask your mother.”

“Byron…” Adrian chided.

She ignored him and got to her feet, groping over her head until she found a handhold, shaking her head at startled offers of help. Following the smell of lavender, she bumped against and clumsily penetrated her mother’s entourage.

“Baby, what –”

She took her mother’s reluctantly offered hand and, too impatient to feel for space on a nearby seat, sank to the floor, resting her head against Sally’s knee like a very small child. After a moment, the older woman’s hand settled on the crown of her head, warm and still. Cue; response.

Sally wasn’t the only Isham who could set a scene.

Laurie rested there a minute, glad of the numbness in her face. She pretended the darkness was her closed eyes, that she and Sally were resting while Teamsters screwed in lighting rigs and techs balanced the furnishings of a luxury cabin for maximum feng shui.

Sally was not a woman of secrets. At least half her waking hours were on record, available to virtually re-live for 10 bu a minute (or unlimited access by monthly subscription). During the rest, she was not only doted on by a small army but half comatose. The outside world came to her on a drip-feed, pre-digested by confidants, handlers, Larry, her production company, even Zeiss-Ikon lawyers. She was a single, wobbly step up from insensible meatpuppet.

She was also a white hat, one of the oldest in the business (though any who breathed a word of that obvious, universally known truth would be outcast, eviscerated by her fans). Sally helped write the alphabet, hell, the cave paintings that underpinned the edifices of cyberspace. Back in those days, she’d hid a hell of a brain in a beautiful body, and only Mason, and maybe Blake, had really known how deep she could go when she slipped Larry’s leash.

“Mom…” she began. “Byron, he –”

“You know, I’ve always regretted what happened to Zandt,” Sally interrupted.

“Mom?” Laurie asked. The hand on her head twitched, then began to stroke, fingernails gently scraping her scalp.

“She and I…we were never friends. Could barely stand each other, to shame the devil and tell the truth. But she was the best of us, probably. I didn’t believe anyone could be such a…” That breathy chuckle again. Theatrical dressing. “Such a true believer. Capital T, capital B. She thought she could punish all the bad men and make the world safe. She really…it didn’t matter. Not that there’d always be bad men. Not that our battles could never be anything but a drop in the bucket. So I thought, Larry’s right, do a little good, and no harm to raise my profile doing it, but Ursula? No ‘little’ about it.”

Another blast of lavender, a choking breath of camomile, as Sally’s alarmed handlers murmured that she should rest, she had a shoot to return to, already so far behind schedule, she must rest, sleep if she could…

“Those goddamn grimy holos…hell.” The hand tightened in her hair, pulling the roots, but Laurie kept still, grinding her teeth with the effort of not telling Sally to get to the point, telling those handlers to swan dive out the nearest airlock. “Sure, she could pass for 18 in those pictures, but so did I, back then. Even a basic crack of her juvie records would tell you she’d been underage, couldn’t have signed a contract of her own free will to shoot what they had her doing. Couldn’t have been in bed with those bastards. Not as a baby and certainly not in our day, burning their kiddieporn competition like some flaming Valkyrie. That old hack Gardner, he insisted…”

Her handlers pulled at Laurie, squawking. Rest, Sally had to rest, not wrinkle herself over such ugly things, all of them in the dead past anyway.

“Funny how those old holos leaked just as she finally traced all the sub-contracts up to one of the big studios, huh?”

Laurie dug in her boots and swatted blindly at the women, the shabby faux-Sallies. “Harpies, shoo!”

The scuffle intensified, adding masculine voices. Adrian’s legists.

Sally’s hair brushed Laurie’s face as her mother leaned close. “Funny how I’d just signed that first holoseries contract, when I kept _my_ mouth shut, huh, while they tore her apart?” she hissed, her breath warm in Laurie’s ear.

“Mom, what are you – ”

It was too late. That warmth was gone even before stronger hands grabbed her by the arms and hauled her bodily – but politely – to her feet. “Ma’am, please return to your seat. Our insurance policy requires all passengers be strapped in at all times.”

Laurie let them guide her back to a seat. She knew when she’d been dismissed, even without her eyes to see Sally automatically reach for the ready drink, liquid sedative. So she was surprised when Sally called after her.

“This isn’t the world I’m leaving you, baby. Remember that.”

Laurie shook her head, trying to will away the fog of exhaustion and ultracodeine. She’d wanted to ask Sally about Blake, if they’d kept up a secret channel all these years, but she certainly couldn’t have blurted it out in front of so many corporate grey hats, no more than Adrian could let anything slip about his own V-A leak. She wished she could talk with Sally alone.

God help her, Laurie wished she could have her mommy’s full attention.

Well, she’d never had it, and never would. She’d crack this thing without her.

“Byron…”

“Sir, I am asking you to calm down.”

“Geoffrey, I’m handling this. Byron – ”

“Sir, with all due respect, sir, Mr Lewis has become a threat, and our primary objective is to nullify all threats in your vicinity. Sir, Mr Lewis, if you don’t return to your seat and re-attach your restraints immediately, I will be forced to initiate an order of censure while forcibly sedating – ”

“Byron, calm yourself. We are nearly home. Miss Isham, I must insist you remain – ”

Laurie pushed blindly forward, toward the sound of choked wheezing, shouldering aside a body she belatedly realised (from the sudden cocking of legist-issue stun rifles) was Adrian, but didn’t stop until she touched metal. Massive arms clanked around her.

“Uncle By,” she whispered. She had a stifling moment to realise that she’d been hugged more in ten minutes than in the year since she’d left Jon, before Byron let up the pressure just enough that she could breathe.

“D-…D-…D-…”

For one mad moment, she thought he was telling her “No,” but no, this wasn’t Kovacs. 

“Dreiberg?” she hazarded instead. “Is Dan ok?”

She felt his hair whip past as he shook his head, and wrenched an arm free to reach for his face. He hand was smacked away when she brushed his faceplate.

“Don’t touch!” Byron snapped.

“Sorry,” she replied, genuinely embarrassed. “I should know better.”

“Down,” he replied.

“Down?”

“Down!”

“Sit down?”

“Down!” he growled, letting her go so abruptly she plopped to the plush carpet.

“Okay,” she said, holding up both hands in a gesture of general surrender. “Down, fine!”

“Down,” he still insisted, as Adrian’s security pulled her back, starting to build a perimeter around the old man.

“The car?” she called to him. “You mean we should set down here?”

“K,” he replied, snorting impatiently.

_How does he…_ she thought, then, _No, he couldn’t have. That was “ok.” He’s just slipping away again, missed the “o.”_

“Ok,” she echoed. “Ok, we’ll…Adrian, let’s stop for a moment. Let Uncle By take a breather.”

She tried to think of a good reason, anything other than “making a blind break for it on the street is preferable to snuggling up Rapunzel-like in your plush, safe tower,” but Adrian saved her the trouble. Over security’s protests that they were moments from the roof’s landing pad, he told the pilot to land.

Byron’s metallic hands grabbed her under the armpits like a toddler, pulling her to her feet with surprising strength. He shuffled them both toward what she guessed was the door, shoving a heavy rectangle into her grip. She struggled to get hold of it with one hand braced against the car’s cushioned inner wall until finding the handle.

“Uncle By, your briefcase – this is an antique, I can’t –”

“Loan,” he whispered fiercely. “I expect it returned. Young lady.”

His hands trembled under hers. She hadn’t known he was still capable of such a long stretch of relative coherency, and she could only imagine what it was costing him. “I will.”

“Laurie,” Adrian again, close enough to touch. She felt the twitchy stares of his security detail. “I do need to speak with you. After the doctor has seen to your injuries, I know you must rest and you will, but first we have urgent plans to discuss. Your mother is on board, is one of the keystones I’m counting on, but Byron is right, especially now. We need you, perhaps even more than Sally. Your instincts with that D’Arcy child, and the sympathy this coverage will generate – ”

The car landed, lurching the last few inches. Byron held her tighter.

“Why me?” Laurie asked. “Dan, I could see, but me…if you want someplace broken into, you could just buy it. What could I possibly help you with?”

A gust of stale air as the outer door twisted open.

“He’s going to save the world,” Byron answered tonelessly, and threw her out of the car.

* * *

“Byron!” Adrian exclaimed, pulling the old man back from the door. “Laurie, I –”

In the moment he managed to lean out of the door, into the expected hush of indrawn breaths and quickly snapped photographs, before his legists yanked him back, he saw that she hadn’t fallen blindly to the sidewalk, further injuring her battered body, but into the waiting arms of her partners. They moved smoothly, pivoting together to set her on her feet and protecting her on either side with their own ridiculous bodies, arms linked over her shoulders, sidestepping the gathering crowd that mainly lunged after another glimpse of himself, faces drawn down against the few fast thinkers who recorded his mysterious passengers instead.

“Wait,” he told his legists, “let her go.”

They still wouldn’t allow him back to the door, so he was forced to call out over their heads: “Daniel! Find me!”

He winced as he allowed them to firmly move him back to his seat, less gently pushing Byron into a seat out of arm’s reach and securing him in place. One of them – Edgar, he thought, a scholarship recipient like Ramon – thumped on the intercom and demanded the driver get them to the penthouse, threatening to bankrupt him with a civil suit if the trip took longer than sixty seconds.

Adrian nodded approval at his initiative and thumbed on his seat’s viewscreen to watch himself, hair flopping askew in the city’s rough wind, leaning after a badly beaten woman he seemed to have thrown out of his car. It cut to a profile of Laurie, then split the screen to add a similar profile of Dreiberg (he noted that it was the same used the previous day, after they’d walked through the lower offices together, and mentally chided the lazy production assistant) while playing a sound file of “Daniel, find me!” The screen split again, the final third taken up by a question mark.

He felt certain Kovacs would be pleased at that.

Adrian sent a command to his archivers to have a full array of the last minute’s coverage recorded and prepared for review by the time he was in his office and allowed himself the luxury of rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Byron…” he began, but the old man refused to engage. He tapped at his facescreen, watching footage of Laurie tumbling out of the car on a loop. Adrian wished he could take a sample of the old man’s spinal fluid and know for sure if Laurie’s unceremonious exit was a flash of genius or dementia-induced spite. Her partners’ instant rescue suggested conspiracy. He wished as well, very very much, for his bottle of “aspirin,” contemplating for the hundredth time if it would not be worth simply stepping off that ledge, allowing himself to take as much as he wanted for a set period of, perhaps, six weeks, trusting he could force himself back from addiction and see without the maddening intermediary of his dissipated cousin. After all, if that blasted Kovacs could go on for two decades without sliding into toxic obsession, surely…

Adrian derailed his train of thought and turned to Sally, but she lolled against her headrest, barely conscious. He gestured to one of the infinity of Sallies perched around her and pointed at the empty glass in her hand.

“Could you kindly make up one of those for my cousin, as well?”

The imitation Isham quickly poured another glass from her metal tumbler and added a straw, working that between Byron’s lips with a solicitous coo. Another added a squirt of ylang-ylang to the car’s already choking atmosphere.

Hell with his security, Adrian decided. Once he’d reached the increased safety of his inner sanctum, he was jacking in and joining the investigation himself. He was not made to endure such inactivity while others decided his fate. And if his presence immediately triggered another attempt on his life – which he hoped it would…

Kovacs, it had not been idle speculation that had brought that crazed vigilante to mind. Kovacs would be online, as always, willingly back Adrian up if called. Not out of friendship or any sentimentality held toward his former comrade in arms, but sheer inability to resist a fight. And the man’s insane paranoia made him an ideal ally against forces within Adrian’s own company.

He should have used Kovacs from the beginning. In fact…

“Edgar – are you online?”

The secure-lawyer came to attention even as the car swayed in the difficult wind currents above V-A Tower’s landing pad. “Yes, sir.”

“Set an employee contract for Kovacs, Walter J, no fixed address, security clearance template C-16, effective immediately, hours and remuneration to be negotiated and back-dated as needed. Full benefits package. Send it now, via the details I have on file for Dreiberg, Daniel.”

“Yes, sir.” Edgar’s fingers moved against the datapad on the side of his visor. “Sent. I assume Human Resources has Mr Kovacs’ full investigation and security clearance on file?”

Adrian smiled to himself, anticipating Edgar’s expression once he downloaded that dossier. “Oh, yes. In fact, you should immediately access and append – ”

The ship touched down on its landing pad just as the top three floors of V-A Towers disintegrated.


	14. Chapter 14

Dreiberg didn’t question the taxi idling around the corner from Adrian’s headquarters, even if it was too old and dirty to exist on the same block as that glossy tower. Once Adrian’s car took off, the crowd hungrily turned after them, chasing the rest of the hour’s hottest new story, and he’d have leapt through any open door to get Laurie away from them. Still, he was relieved when Kovacs grunted his equivalent of a warm greeting to the driver, who pulled a baseball cap lower over her face and peeled synth-rubber without waiting for a destination.

“Should’ve known you two’d be wherever I landed,” Laurie grumbled, digging her shoulder into Dreiberg’s well cushioned ribs. He touched her face, careful to avoid the deepening bruises around her eye sockets, alarmed at the cold clamminess of her skin. “But where is that?”

“You’re safe,” he replied, hoping it was true. At Laurie’s other side, Kovacs cringed against the door, but allowed her to squeeze the hand roughly bandaged with her microcloth. “We’re going home.”

He held up a hand to forestall Kovacs’ automatic protest. “We’re on the radar now. No point in trying to run for cover.”

Kovacs only shrugged, seemingly absorbed in the data flashing across his visor. With his free hand, he popped open the cracked leather briefcase Laurie had carried with her, silently inventorying the contents, and knocked on the bulletproof plastiform separating them from the driver. She lowered it a few inches, enough to talk but not touch.

“Yeah, freakshow?”

He slid three packs of cigars through the opening, worn Spanish labels Dreiberg didn’t recognise. “First instalment, as promised.”

The driver nodded. “Then our deal holds.”

“Silence,” Kovacs muttered to Dreiberg. “Won’t report to media.”

“Hey,” the driver scowled into the rear-view vid, “I’m not one of those cinnie-hounds. My cab’s clean…mostly because it’s no good to viddie yourself handling contraband. But you wanna pay for it, be my guest.”

Laurie pushed away from Dan to lean closer, bumping her forehead on the plastiform twice as the cab rolled over an open manhole. “I know that voice, don’t I?”

“You recognise me.” The driver glowed. “I knew you would. You’re not the kind that forgets.”

“Wish I was, sometimes,” Laurie snorted weakly. “Josephine, right?”

The driver laughed, delighted as a spectacularly muscular child. “Right!”

“That credit chip of yours got us through a hell of a jam,” Laurie told her.

“That came from her?” Dreiberg asked. He didn’t remember hearing about a charitable cabbie, but then they’d been busy…

“Traded for cigarettes,” Kovacs muttered. “Bad deal.”

“Good to see you again,” Laurie talked over him, squeezing his hand harder. “So to speak.”

“I’d have come for free if I knew what they’d done to you, Miss Isham,” the driver said, cutting through an intersection against the light. “Those bastards, when I saw your mother’s feed here on the dashboard, I was so mad I coulda –”

“I’m glad you’re here now.” Laurie’s composure slipped, and she slumped back, groaning, against Dan’s shoulder.

“Alley,” Kovacs ordered. “Here.”

Kovacs kicked open the door while Josephine cut off another cab to turn sharply, cursed and stood on the brakes. He yanked Laurie halfway out after him by the hand and stepped back.

“Kovacs, what – ” Dreiberg began, cut off as Laurie heaved, splattering the macadam with her last meal. Kovacs held back her hair with the hand that wasn’t already clutched in her glove, fastidiously avoiding any contact with her skin.

“Ah, fuck,” she moaned, “It all tastes like tears.”

Dreiberg rubbed her back, mentally running through the treatment for shock, as if she didn’t need to be in a hospital hours ago. “All out?”

“I think so,” she muttered, flopping back against him. Josephine handed back a half-empty bottle of energy soda, which Laurie gingerly sipped and spat out. “Dan, I’m – I’m done in. Adrenaline’s all pissed out of me. How far…?”

“Meet at Bleeker and – ” Kovacs began to tell the driver.

“Yeah, I remember,” the driver snapped. “Just hurry it up. You gotta get the lady to a doctor.”

Kovacs slammed the door in reply and climbed up on the car’s roof, jumping from there to a fire escape and clambering higher.

“You should drink that, if you can keep it down,” Josephine advised, flipping switches on her dashboard. The windows darkened and, from the faint grind over his head, he guessed that the cab’s number designation rolled to show a different ID. “Or, fuck, say the word and I drive us to St Olave’s on Guerrero. I know a guy who could get you in under the radar and up to the private ward without a single papsnap.”

“Let’s stick to Kovacs’ plan,” Dreiberg replied, hoping his partner had a good one. He’d been silent on the walk to the Veidt-Ashpool tower, grimly shooting off messages in between leaning on Dreiberg while he narrated what Laurie heard and felt in Adrian’s vehicle. _Can’t reply without visual interface_ , he’d ground out through clenched teeth, _can’t give location, can’t help at all._

Not that they’d needed to. Somehow Laurie had carried herself right to them. Dreiberg would sort it out later, when her core temperature wasn’t dropping faster than the Metro precinct’s approval rating. Kovacs had left two of his jackets behind, which Dreiberg tucked around her, trying not to watch as, behind the glasses, her eyelids creased over empty space, trying to blink.

Josephine pulled into traffic and loitered now, idling through the streets. Media hovercopters lingered and moved on, momentarily thrown off the scent. Dreiberg held Laurie close, rubbing her cold hands.

Had Adrian called his name as they escaped? Kovacs would know. He was probably already analysing every pixel of uploaded recordings. Dreiberg wasn’t about to go online himself and move his attention from Laurie for even a nanosecond.

Josephine abruptly dipped out of traffic between streetlights, tucking into the shadows under an elevated monorail platform.

“Are we safe here?” Dreiberg asked.

She shrugged. “Miss Isham, how are you holding up?”

No answer.

“Fuck this, man, I’m taking her to a hospital.”

“Wait for Kovacs.”

“She needs a doctor!”

“Wait –” Dreiberg began, and jumped half out of his skin when the door next to him opened.

“Move over.”

He shifted, squinting through the gloom. “Chess?”

Kovacs opened the front passenger door and settled next to Josephine, demanding she fully retract the divider to let him reach through to the back seat. Chess moved Laurie so her head lay in his lap, gesturing for Dreiberg to lift her legs up on his. He opened up the bag he’d brought and pulled out an abbreviated IV rig and bag of saline.

“What?”

“Finished my medic certificate in the slammer,” he told Dreiberg. “Battle trauma track. Guaranteed commission if war with the Redskis heats up again. How’d you think I got my stim connections? Creep – hold this.”

Kovacs held up the saline bag while Dreiberg held Laurie’s arm steady, both watching Chess set the IV shunt in Laurie’s elbow and started the drip. Chess took the briefcase from Kovacs and picked out a few vials, injecting one into the saline bag – “Stabiliser,” he muttered as Dreiberg voiced a protest – and shooting others directly into the bruising on her face.

“She’s taken how much ultracodeine?” he asked Kovacs, who shook his head.

“Was before connection established.”

“Looked like two, maybe three pills in the feed,” Josephine offered. “At least before Sally held her.”

She sniffled and rubbed an eye, remembering.

“Great, so that’s contraindicated with what I got for the spine and knee recon work. Unless you got somewhere she can sleep it off, first? I can get her stable enough for that, even comfortably blitzed.”

Kovacs punched the dashboard with his free hand, earning a smack from Josephine.

“Your place,” he growled.

Chess shook his head. “Hey, I said you shoulda drove up to my door – I could use the publicity. ‘Friend of friends of Adrian Viedt-Ashpool’! But you guys, laying low under my roof? Nah. I can’t handle the element you attract.”

Dreiberg rubbed his eyes and pried the saline bag from Kovacs’ white-knuckled fist. “We shouldn’t rule out Adrian’s help.”

“No,” Kovacs insisted.

“I’m practically a V-A employee. We can use those connections…”

Kovacs jumped in his seat like it had stabbed him, striking the driver in his haste to punch the volume button on her dashboard viewscreen. She raised her hand to smack him away again, lips pulling back for a scathing insult that died behind her teeth as the blast of a not-distant-enough explosion reached them.

Instead, she whispered: “Holy fuck, freakshow….am I seein’ this?”

Dreiberg and Chess stretched their necks to get a look at the screen without moving Laurie. There, Veidt-Ashpool Tower exploded, ran backwards into wholeness, and exploded again.

_“ – recorded just moments ago in the heart of our city – ”_

“Kovacs, that’s – ”

“I know, Daniel.” Kovacs’ hands moved like hummingbirds, frantically filtering incoming data.

“Tell me – you tell me right now – what kinda shit are you in?”

Chess leaned back and looked up out the curving back windshield.

_“ – survival of Adrian Veidt-Ashpool and his passengers is not confirmed at this time – ”_

The video feed zoomed in and enhanced one corner, where the V-A craft wobbled in the blast and then just – disappeared – exactly like the penthouse floors of the building below it.

“You tell me!” Josephine demanded again. “You got anything to do with this? That why you grabbed her before that…that thing blew?”

“Clean up to the dome,” Chess muttered, as if answering her. “Nothing but wind. You’d think, boom like that, it’d be mushroom clouds burning the dome black.”

“Point,” Kovacs grunted, his fingers somehow speeding up. “Mystic’s place – that blew too. Debris…maybe not enough. Cosmetic.”

Dreiberg bit his tongue and let Kovacs work. He focused on the video feed rolling by again and again on the monitor, trying to keep his brain from getting in the way of his eyes. Something in the sequence was wrong, was crying out for attention, if he could just…

“Why dincha get Sally out too? Goddammit, freakshow, why didncha save them both? Laurie, fuck, Laurie, your momma…”

Laurie forced in a deep breath and lifted her head, trying to see, growling weakly when Chess forced her to lie back. “Home. Now.”

Kovacs nodded. “Agreed.”

Dreiberg looked from one to the other. “You’re kidding? We have to run. My place is probably rubble, too, or more likely will be the second we step inside!”

Kovacs poked at the taxi’s controls, re-setting the windows to their normal transparency. Josephine smacked his hands again and punched in the command to re-set the identity marker herself, taking a long shaky breath.

“Go,” Kovacs told her, and gave her Dreiberg’s home address.

“What, no! We’ll…” he protested, trailing off as he considered their options.

“Back on the radar,” Laurie whispered to Dreiberg.

“Terrorists run.” Josephine slipped easily back into traffic, wedging them into a sluggish jam and still mostly in shadow, waiting for the hovercopters to find them. “Don’t you know anything?”

_I’m no terrorist, just a garden-variety cyber-vigilante, which, ok, is maybe even less legal…_ He took a moment, listening for the whoosh of blades in the air. Dreiberg was accustomed to hiding out in the open, under plain plumage, genuinely or tacitly ignored. Anyone who knew enough to suspect Dreiberg was a criminal also knew he was too dangerous to flush out. He was a nobody, so far as anyone cared to know.

But now he was a blip, and a damn big one, tied to the Ishams and Adrian Veidt-Ashpool, twice in as many days. Two family empires. That put a hell of a lot of eyes on him, and if he didn’t bore them into looking elsewhere by the next news cycle…

They’d just have to walk face first into almost certain attack themselves.

“Fine. We go home. Visibly. Taking our friend to recuperate. Chess, can you look legitimate?”

The other man grinned, obviously taking no offense. “Got my whites in the bag, man. Doc Chess, at your service.”

“Just cover up the tattoos and keep your mouth closed. Kovacs, I’ve got to check in with V-A security, join the response.”

Kovacs’ thin lips twitched. “No need. Have been…liaising…since first explosion.” 

“You – why? And why would anyone in V-A let you near their servers?”

“Chasing several leads now. All bogus, of course. Should check your email more often.” Kovacs showed his gruesome teeth. “ _I_ ” he emphasised the rarely used pronoun “am V-A employee. Accelerated managerial track. Heh.”

Laurie tried to raise her head again, giving up before Chess could restrain her again. “What the fuck have you given me? I’m tripping my balls off here, could swear K said he’s put on the tie.”

“They found us,” Josephine said, leaning forward to look up through her windshield. One hovercopter loomed over them all by its lonesome for a moment, but was quickly joined by others. Josephine switched the channels on her viewscreen until she found their feed.

“What do we do,” Dreiberg asked, “do we lean out and wave?”

“Ignore them,” Laurie replied weakly. “Act irritated. Outraged, if you can manage it with any subtlety. Then refuse to acknowledge them. We…we’re shocked, and grieving. My mother’s dead, and we just…we just heard. And Adrian. Him too.”

“I’m going to get moving now, ok?” Josephine asked, voice trembling.

“Don’t make it look too easy,” Laurie whispered. “Coverage like this, a has-been B-lister wouldn’t want to escape. Even…”

“Laurie, I don’t know.” Dreiberg squeezed her even tighter. “I don’t know about that. Don’t even think it, not yet. Adrian’s conveyance, it didn’t blow, it, it _blipped_.”

Laurie sniffed, hard, and grimaced as if that made her face hurt worse. “Blip? What blips?”

“I don’t know, that’s what I’m telling you.” Dreiberg exchanged a glance with Kovacs’ screen, and from the fraction of a nod, knew his partner had added that thread to his investigations. “Online, sure, you burn someone, they, their avatar, it blips. Connection broken, can’t be re-established quickly, if you burned them right. Blip: welcome to meatspace, loser.”

“So…” Laurie coughed and let the syllable hang for a few seconds. “We’re…not in meatspace now? We’re all online?”

Kovacs snorted.

“Squeeze that bag,” Chess told him, flicking a grim smile at Dreiberg over her head.

“Huh, no, no,” Dreiberg stammered, “that’s…no. The processing power it’d take to render a 3D real-world environment, it’s, well, there’s no technology anywhere in the world like that. Probably never will be. I meant, hell, maybe Adrian’s secretly developed cloaking technology. This could all be part of his plan, whatever that is – assassination attempts, faked death to throw us all off his trail…your mother’s probably just fine, if, well, his hostage.”

Josephine was nudging her way through sluggish traffic, bumping the drivers who’d gotten out to peer in at whoever had the media’s attention. She rolled down her window and cursed, but closed it after the nearest lookieloos stuck mobile cameras inside, blindly snapping photos of her passengers. Kovacs curled into his seat, snarling quietly.

“Hard to believe I walked away from this, huh?” Laurie muttered.

“Right,” Josephine harrumphed, “I’ve had fucking enough of it.”

She threw the taxi into reverse, knocking down several spectators, and leaned on her horn. “That’s all the warning you’re getting…”

She revved the engine, and the crowd that had surged into the space she made began to scramble over each other to get out of the way.

Kovacs reached over his head and casually locked the seat restraint into place around his chest.

Josephine hit the accelerator. Her reinforced cowcatcher grill bashed into the two cars in front of her and slammed them forward and sideways. She crumpled both fenders jamming between them and punched the back boosters as she slammed on the front brakes, fishtailing around the wreck and forcing her way onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattered as she scraped along the wall of Robco Headquarters’ Upper Metro Division, careened around the narrow corner, and pushed through two more parked cars to barrel into an intersection.

The civicop directing traffic looked at the media blimps hanging over them like bright red balloons and made space in the gridlock, waving them through to a clearer street.

Dreiberg sat up, carefully, helping Chess check that Laurie’s elbow shunt was still in place. She’d gone limp as soon as Josephine blew the horn, nearly stopping Dreiberg’s heart, but he realised now it was only to roll with motions she couldn’t predict. She still winced as they re-settled her.

“Goddamn spine…but good job, lady. Anyone who can escape the paps like that should work for my mother.”

Her face tightened again, and Drieberg knew it wasn’t from the neat snap of Chess disconnecting the now-empty saline bag.

“We’re not far from home,” he told her.

Civicops were forcing ordinary cars to divert off the main streets, to make way for emergency and media vehicles, but they waved Josephine through. She kept to a more sedate speed now, watching the hovercopters as they kept pace. “I’m not gonna get ticketed for any of that, am I?”

“Doubtful,” Dreiberg told her. “Not with a celebrity passenger.”

The coverage on her viewscreen began cycling through Laurie’s exit from Adrian’s car again, speculating on her ejection and brief disappearance just before the disaster, saving her life. None of the outlets had formulated a good Laurie Isham conspiracy theory, though, given video evidence that she’d merely gotten stuck in traffic in one of the Sprawl’s bird’s-eye blind spots. It showed a brief synopsis of her rescue from the precinct, focusing on Sally Isham’s bravery and Adrian Veidt-Ashpool’s kindness, inching toward their memorial narratives.

That story cut out as their cab came to a halt outside Dreiberg’s unassuming brownstown, returning to an aerial view from one of the hovercopters.

“We’re here,” Dreiberg said, letting Chess secure the shunt with a strip of tape and rolling her sleeve over it. “Think you can walk up the steps, or should we carry you?”

“Showtime,” Laurie whispered, struggling to sit up. “Look alive.”

Kovacs opened the old briefcase. Dreiberg peeked over the plastiform as he got out and saw it was one that divided down the middle. In the cushioned space that would have cradled an antique laptop device was a large bulging envelope – that would be Laurie’s confiscated belongings – and some fragments of tech he didn’t immediately recognise. Kovacs offered Josephine the contents of the other half: more cigars, pints of whisky and gin, cans of tuna and anchovies and mixed fruit in syrup. A woman with the right connections could vacation for a couple of years on that haul.

“No,” she said, pushing the briefcase back at Kovacs. “I don’t want any of that shit. I want you.”

She activated the door lock before Chess could open the door on his side and twisted in her seat. “I wanna be your friend. Live in your world. You can’t kick me outta this after dragging me in.”

Kovacs hissed like a wet cat, raising a hand like he could hurt the larger woman. Laurie shushed him impatiently.

“My world stinks, Jo. I don’t want to live in it. But you want to be my friend, hell – I could use another one of those. K, give her my details.”

Kovacs frowned, but complied, punching the information into the dashboard computing system. Josephine unlocked the door and, as the viewscreen zoomed in on Chess helping Laurie out, handing her to Dreiberg, Kovacs warned: “Abuse this, abuse Miss Isham, and – ”

“Yeah, yeah. Told you, I run a clean cab.” She grabbed the briefcase and dumped the contraband into her glove compartment. 

Kovacs yanked the briefcase back, snapping it shut protectively. “Thought saving Miss Isham’s life was payment enough.”

On the monitor, the feed of Laurie upright and walking up steps (if leaning hard on her doctor and old family friend) cut to his leg swinging out of the cab, then back to Laurie at the front door.

_Strong. Always._

“That’s payment for putting up with you, bub.”

_Ignorant and insolent, but useful. Can keep contraband. Must investigate further before permitting friendship with Miss Isham. Pull hat lower, flip up collar of remaining jacket. Futile effort, no shield from cameras. No longer. Prickle against their leer on back and legs, but will not scamper like frightened vermin. Satisfying to slam fortified front door against them._

_Building does not disintegrate on entrance. Pleasant surprise._

_Message V-A legist team to serve gag order on three largest media conglomoutlets pending investigation of assassination attempt and order pundits-for-hire to protest for free speech. Approve joint memorial/ad-blitz proposal from Senior Miss Isham’s representatives. Leak rumors of Russian involvement. New noise will push coverage on from Miss Isham._

_Also demand full purge of doctored Laurie Isham images from online fan-servers and immediate arrest of perpetrators, as entrapment in corporate cell must have some consolations._

_Daniel and Chess settle Laurie on couch. Holds up hand. Warning: stay silent. Bugs?_

_Likely. Couch is…shiny. Old leather polished and clean. Room smells wrong. Fresh. Acidic. Daniel’s old books lined up out of order. Or, in wrong order, arranged by color of binding, from red to violet, instead of topic. Carpet uniformly damp, lined with paper walkways._

_Daniel raises an index finger: wait. Be still. Consider options._

_Waste of time._

_Avoid paper. Squelch deeper into home, to kitchen. Air’s acidic tinge heavier, cloying, where burnt toast, cold coffee, should linger. Leaves taste in back of throat. Poisonous? All systems remain optimal._

_Flip on light. Surfaces glow, smooth as brushed aluminium._

_Daniel follows, grips shoulder. Eyes wide, mouth tight, jerks finger across his neck._

_Shake head in return. Must investigate depth of violation. Find explosive material, listening devices, biohazard drops. Retreat to cameras’ sight, to insecure hospital, will cement Miss Isham as central narrative figure, torpedo pursuit of justice._

_Daniel throws hands over head, still silent, and examines false wall over basement door._

_Scrutinize surfaces through visor, flicking between wavelength filters. Nothing. Clean. Clean, as in scrubbed, bleached, waxed. Not even a smudged fingerprint to inventory._

_Dreiberg waves for attention, volcanic infrared figure, thumbs up. Basement entrance went undetected. Fortunate. No, not fortunate, skilled. Circuits embedded in wall return decoy readings to visor, indicate only continuation of kitchen wall._

_Dreiberg turns clockwise, opens refrigerator door._

_Cold blue light spills on shocked face.  
/post_


End file.
